Musicae compendium

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Musicae compendium is a music-theoretical treatise which René Descartes wrote in 1618 at the age of 22 and which was only published in 1650. It is his attempt using a mathematical proportions theory , musical harmonies and intervals to explain.

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Illustration from Musicae Compendium , Utrecht 1650

Descartes' brief study deals with parameters of sound , rhythm and intervals , consonances and assonances , both physically and psychologically. He assigns an effect on the senses and thus on the soul to each special interval , which can range from simple pleasure to complex affects. In the chapter De numero vel tempore in sonis observando he drafts a doctrine of the proportion of numbers, which he set up in the 2nd chapter as the proportion of the lines and applies it to the musical passage of time, i. H. For the first time he formulated a theory of the temporal arrangement of music and "takes [...] far ahead of the meter and period theory of the second half of the 18th century".

Origin and publication history

Descartes prepared the text in November / December 1616 and sent the manuscript to Isaac Beeckman for information and with the request to keep it to himself. The original manuscript has not survived, but there are several contemporary copies of the original. a. by Constantijn Huygens (1637) and Frans van Schooten (around 1640), on the basis of which the first printed edition was created. Reprints followed in 1656 by Jansson in Amsterdam and in 1595 by Knoch in Frankfurt a. M. The first translation into English was published by Thomas Harper in London in 1653, followed by translations into Flemish and French in 1661 and 1669. The French translation by the oratorian Nicolas Joseph Poisson was published with detailed annotations by Charles Angot in Paris in 1669 under the title Abregé de musique .

reception

Descartes' treatise, which is based on texts by Gioseffo Zarlino and Francisco de Salinas (1513–1590), was known to Rameau , but Jean Jacques Rousseau also took a critical position on Descartes under the heading Consonance of his Dictionnaire de Musique (1767) , but otherwise it remained largely unnoticed in the following period. His book became known in Germany through Wolfgang Caspar Printz , who deals with Descartes in his Compendium musicae signatoriae et modulatoriae vocalis from 1669, as well as through Georg Andreas Sorge , who quotes him in his Vergemachischer Musikischer Composition (1745/47).

Text output

  • Oeuvres de Descartes . Publiées by Charles Adam & Paul Tannery. Sous les Auspices de Ministere de L'Instruction Publique. 12 volumes u. Register tape
Volume 10: Physico-Mathematica. Compendium Musicae . Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii. Research de la Verité. Supplement a la Correspondance. Paris: Cerf 1897. New edition Paris: Vienne 1966. (The authoritative work edition.)
  • Musicae Compendium. Guide of music . Latin-German. Ed. U. trans. by Johannes Brockt. 3rd unchanged edition. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2011, ISBN 978-3-534-24307-5 .

literature

  • B. Wardhaugh (Ed.): The "Compendium Musicæ" of René Descartes: Early English Responses . Tournholt, Brepols 2013, ISBN 978-2-503-54898-2 .
  • M. Wald: René Descartes. Musicae compendiu . In: Kindlers Literature Lexicon. JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2009.
  • B. Augst Descartes's Compendium on Musicae. In: Journal of the history of idea. Vol. 26, No. 1. 1965. pp. 118-132.
  • Ichiro Sumikura: Rene Descartes Compendium Musicae. A reflection on his place in the history of music theory . In: Aesthetics. Vol. 26, Issue 3, 1975.
  • Thomas Christensen: Rameau and Musical thought in the Enlightment . Cambridge University Press, 1993. (Cambridge Studies in Music Theory and Analysis.)
  • Larry M. Jorgensen: Descartes on Music: Between the Ancients and the Aestheticians. In: The British Journal of Aesthetics. Vol. 52, Issue 4, 2012. pp. 407-424.

Web links

Commons : Musicae compendium  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dominik Perler: René Descartes. 2nd Edition. Beck, Munich 2008, p. 14.
  2. ↑ Birger Peterson-Mikkelson: The melody theory of the perfect capell master by Johann Mattheson. A Study of the Paradigm Shift in Eighteenth Century Music . Diss. Kiel 2001. Eutin 2002. (Eutin contributions to music research. 1.)
  3. ↑ Raoul Corazzon: René Descartes. Bibliography annotée. Section 4. 2019.
  4. ↑ Compendium Musicae - various editions and manuscripts. In: Media Archive of the Arts. Retrieved July 22, 2020.
  5. ↑ a b Johannes Brockt: Introduction, in: René Descartes. Musicae Compendium Guide to Music. 3rd edition Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchges. 2011, p. XII.
  6. ↑ Harald Heckmann: The beat in the music theory of the 17th century. In: Archives for Musicology. Vol. 10, H. 2, 1953, pp. 116-139.