Music to Your Eyes: Musical Notes in the Othmer Library

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Operas, oratorios, and concerti grossi—the 17th and 18th centuries were exciting times in the world of European classical music! Bach, Pachelbel, Purcell, and Scarlatti were among the many who tooted their (French) horns in the baroque period; Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven enchanted audiences with their classical tunes. It was the birth of the orchestra as we know it today, and mechanical instruments like barrel organs were all the rage. Naturally, music also appears in many books from the period, some of which are now in the Othmer Library.

Instrumental: musical instruments
Musical instruments have always been ingenious constructions whose appearance bows to the mechanics of producing sound. When someone takes a block of wood and a few metal strings and produces, say, a cello with wonderful resonance, it is nothing short of a miracle—and a work of minute engineering and skilled manipulation of materials. It is not surprising that putti in baroque churches often play man-made instruments for their heavenly music.

Curieuses und reales Natur-Kunst- Berg-Gewerck- und Handlungs-Lexicon (1762)

Books from the same period (even books that are not specifically on the subject of music) often incorporate images of the instruments of their time into their frontispieces or printers’ marks. Here, the instruments may represent music as an art or science, or the craft of instrument making. The frontispiece in Paul Jacob Marperger's Curieuses und reales Natur-Kunst-Berg-Gewerck- und Handlungs-Lexicon (1762) is crammed with human activity and achievements, paired with mythological figures, and set in a landscape full of meaningful allusions. The book itself, an encyclopedia on all things related to science, includes many entries on musical instruments like the guitar, describing different guitar-like instruments, their dimensions, how they are played, and the extent of their tonal range.

Math (and after): the connection between mathematics and music
Music and mathematics are inseparable, even beyond the archetypal metal-loving science geek. Musical harmonies and rhythms can be broken down into mathematical formulae, and, conversely, the construction of instruments involves much precise calculation. It was especially true in the 17th century, when learned men became fascinated with the possibility of a universal theory that would explain the world and everything in it, that this connection between music and math was explored to its limits and appeared ubiquitously in printed books.

A printer’s mark like that shown in Franceso Algarotti’s Dialoghi sopra la luce . . . (1750) is quite emblematic in this context: it shows three putti who hold a harp and a compass, combining the measure and tone of music with the precision of mathematics. Algarotti’s famous work is on Newton’s theory of light and colors. Interestingly, Newton frequently used music as an illustration of the way light refracts in a prism, joining music to yet another very mathematical aspect of science.

Utriusque cosmi maioris (1617–18)

An elaborate theory of the correspondence between man and the universe was proposed by the famous English physician and astrologer Robert Fludd. In his Utriusque cosmi maioris (1617–18) he shows a one-stringed instrument, a monochord, to illustrate how the divisions of the string refer to musical notes, which, in turn, correspond to pretty much everything under the sun and beyond. Fludd’s further developments of this theory have resulted in some stunning images that are worth looking at even for those who are not mathematically inclined.

Duly noted: musical notation in books
The first books containing musical notes date back to the mid-15th century. The shapes and arrangement of musical notes were a different kind of challenge for printers than ordinary text. But for some Renaissance alchemists and mystics, music was essential for their argument about their theories on matter and transmutation.

Magnes sive, De arte magnetic opus (1643)

The possibly most famous example of a successful pairing of music and alchemical allegory is Michael Maier’s Atalanta fugiens (1618). Each of his 50 "emblems" has a fugue for three parts (written down in musical notation), a Latin verse, its German translation, and an allegorical image, followed by detailed explanations of the symbolism. For Maier, the combination of image, sound, and word makes the spiritual experience of his message a feast for all the senses.

Athanasius Kircher’s Magnes sive, De arte magnetic opus (1643) tells the intriguing etymology of the “tarantella”: this dance was meant to be a cure for a tarantula bite in a remote corner of Italy. This is possibly the only book for which the combination of musical notes, a map, and drawings of tarantulas in an engraving does not seem strange, but is still wonderful.

Bibliography and further reading

• Francesco Algarotti, Dialoghi sopra la luce, i colori e l'attrazione . . . (1750)

• Robert Fludd, Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atque technica historia (1617-18)

• Athanasius Kircher, Magnes sive, De arte magnetica opus tripartitum (1643)

• Michael Maier, Atalanta fugiens (1618)

• Paul Jacob Marperger, Curieuses und reales Natur-Kunst-Berg-Gewerck- und Handlungs-Lexicon (1762)

• Gaspar Schott, Mechanica hydraulico-pneumatica (1657)