Descartes : his life and times / by Elizabeth S. Haldane.

  • Elizabeth Haldane
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Descartes : his life and times / by Elizabeth S. Haldane. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    1618] Florentine Academy first introduced dramatic music with its accompanying recitative, and when enormous progress was being made in instrumentation. It is then no wonder that the science of harmony enlisted the interests of Descartes, though so far as we can gather, it was rather from a mathematical point of view than an aesthetic : whether he had much real appreciation of music we cannot tell. He would not appear to have possessed a very sensitive ear, from the difficulty which he says he experienced in distinguishing the octave and the fifth. In this “imperfect treatise,” which was to be but a token of affection to the friend to whom it was dedicated, and which was to be kept in the “recesses of his cabinet,” we have music treated as a science of mathematical proportions, which proportions, when adhered to, give pleasurable sensations.* He goes on to explain what is meant by time, pitch, harmonies, and discords, explaining clearly so far as he went the methods of composition, and the reasons why particular progressions must be adhered to. We cannot help wondering whether the author himself played any instrument. In his Pensues he explains how to touch a mandoline with mathematical precision, as though he had personally made the endeavour to produce his notes, and in Paris he had studied and listened to the secular music just come into vogue ; the French grand opera had not as yet arisen. About this time, besides the Treatise on Music, Descartes composed various fragmentary works whose titles are enumerated in the inventory found by Chanut after his death.f These were as follows—(i) Some Con- siderations on the Sciences, (2) a paper on Algebra, (3) his reflections, called Democritica (possibly on physics), * He discovered also what has since been demonstrated, that the frequency of vibration of a string of given tension and density varies inversely with its length. (Millet, Descartes avant 1637, p. 59.) The organ had always a fascination for Descartes, who says in one of his letters that he considers it equal to the harp of David for chasing evil spirits away.