Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia universalis (Rome, 1650)
This 17th-century treatise on music shows a mechanical, water-driven harpsichord. Water enters on the right side of the diagram, turning a gear mechanism that animates a cylinder roll and keyboard. Musical notation cut into the cylinder roll determines the keys depressed for any given time. This is similar to the many organ rolls still preserved at the American Organ Institute at OU.
On the far left, blacksmiths strike hammers upon an anvil, recalling the story of Pythagoras discovering the mathematical ratios of the musical scale from the chance hearing of blacksmiths at work. The blacksmith ensemble, with its visual reference to Pythagoras, served as an emblem of the mathematical and musical basis of natural order.
The dance of skeleton figures reminds us of our mortality, a pious commonplace lest an evening of music lead to unrestrained frivolity.
Standard textbooks of mathematics in the 16th and 17th centuries would not be adopted for university courses today! Topics they included that are no longer staples of the curriculum include music, astronomy, cartography, cryptography, fortification, and engineering. In their chapters on music, textbooks touched upon elements of music theory and the working of musical instruments, commonly assuming that the universe itself is a musical instrument that expresses harmonic proportions. This work by Kircher, a Jesuit at the Rome College (Collegio Romano), represents in expanded form how early mathematics textbooks covered the world of music making.
Most of Kircher’s 40 or so books were lavishly illustrated. This volume is no exception, including memorable depictions of birds’ songs in musical notation, or, in a section on acoustics, statues with concealed “speaking tubes” by which they appear to speak, making remote voices audible to anyone who passes by.
One of the more bizarre ideas Kircher mentioned is a hypothetical instrument called a Katzenklavier (”cat piano”), which might perhaps be constructed for the entertainment of a melancholy prince. In this adaptation of a harpsichord, cats arranged in sequence according to the pitches of their yowls would be prompted to sing by the striking of hammers on their tails.
