Biographical Sketches of Marin Mersenne and Athanasius Kircher.
[Chiefly from HAWKINS’s and BURNEY’s Histories.]
AMONG the laborious and voluminous writers on music, those now selected stand prominently forward; and though their respective merits are far from equal—the French ecclesiastic being undeniably superior to the German jesuit, both in knowledge and exactness—yet the works of each have long enjoyed a high reputation, and will always be found useful to those who study music as a science, or historically, and as connected with general literature.
MARIN MERSENNE (in Latin, Marinus Mersennus), a most learned French writer, was born in 1588, at Ayse, in the province of Maine. He received his instruction in polite literature at the college of Flêche; but, quitting that seminary, he went to Paris, and, after having studied divinity some years in the college of the Sorbonne, entered himself among the Minims (a religious order), and, in 1611, received the habit. In 1612, he went to reside in the convent of that order at Paris, where he was ordained priest, and performed his first mass in 1613. Immediately upon his settlement he applied himself to the study of the Hebrew language, under the direction of Father John Bruno, a Scotch Minim, and having acquired a competent degree of skill therein, became a teacher of philosophy and theology in the convent of Nevers. In this station he continued till the year 1619, when he returned to Paris, determined to spend the remainder of his life in study and conversation, as indeed he did, making them his whole employment. In the pursuit of his studies he established and kept up a correspondence with all the learned and ingenious men of his time.
During his stay at Flêche he contracted a friendship with Des Cartes, and manifested it in many instances; of which the following may be reckoned one. Being at Paris, and looked on as the friend of the great philosopher, he reported that Des Cartes was erecting a new system of physics on the foundation of a vacuum; but finding that the public were indifferent to it, he immediately sent intelligence to his friend that a vacuum was not then the fashion, on which the philosopher changed his system, and adopted the old doctrine of a plenum. The residence of Mersenne at Paris did not prevent his making several journeys into foreign countries, for he visited Holland in the middle of the year 1629, and Italy four times, in 1639, 1641, 1644, 1646. In the month of July, 1648, having been to call on his friend Des Cartes, he returned home to his convent excessively heated; to allay his thirst, he drank cold water, and soon after was seized with an illness which produced an abscess in his side. His physicians, imagining his disorder to be a kind of pleurisy, ordered him to be bled several times, but to no purpose. At last it was thought proper to open his side: the operation was begun, but he expired in the midst of it, on the 1st of September, 1648, being then about sixty years of age. He had desired the surgeons, in case of miscarriage in the operation, to open his body, which direction they complied with, and found that they had made the incision two inches below the abscess!
The character of Mersennus as a philosopher and a mathematician is well known in the learned world. To that disposition which led him to the most abstruse studies, he joined a nice and judicious ear, and a passionate love of music; these gave a direction to his pursuits, and were productive of numberless experiments and calculations, tending to demonstrate the principles of harmony, and prove that it is independent of habit or fashion, custom or caprice, and, in short, has its foundation in nature, and in the original frame and constitution of the universe.
In the year 1636, Mersenne published, at Paris, in a large folio volume, his Harmonie Universelle, in which he treats of the nature and properties of sound, of instruments of various kinds, of consonances and dissonances, of composition, of the human voice, of the practice of singing, and a great variety of other matters concerning music.
This work consists of a great number of separate and distinct treatises, with such signatures for the sheets, and numbers of the pages, as to make them independent of each other. The consequence whereof is, that there are hardly any two copies to be met with that contain precisely the same number of tracts, or in which the tracts occur or follow in the same order; so that to cite or refer to the Harmonie Universelle is a matter of some difficulty. Among these are to be found the most minute and satisfactory account of the state of music in France during the reign of Louis XIII. Indeed, Dr. Burney remarks,—his Harmonie Universelle is a work in which, notwithstanding his ‘partiality to his country, want of taste and of method, there are so many curious researches and ingenious and philosophical experiments, which have been of the greatest use to subsequent writers, particularly Kircher, as render the book extremely valuable.’ This work, corrected and enlarged, was translated into Latin, and published by the author in 1648, the year of his death, under the title of De Sonorum Natura, Causis et Effectibus.
In his twenty-third proposition, liv. i., Mersenne explains and describes twelve different kinds of music and movement used in France during his time: namely, motets, songs or airs, passacailles, pavans, allemandes, gaillards, voltes, courantes, sarabands, canaries, branles, and balets; of all which he gives examples in notes. But though most of these movements were the specific names of the dances then in vogue, the minuet, which during the last century was in such general favour all over Europe, is never mentioned.
In the Préface Générale, the author speaks of Galileo’s discoveries in harmonics; and in his liv. ii., Des Consonances, of sympathetic vibrations. In other parts of his work he clearly explains the twelve major keys of practical music; and shows, for the first time perhaps, that there may be seventy-two keys, or six for each note, flat, natural, and sharp, major and minor. There is nothing in this good Father’s book which reflects more honour on his taste and penetration than his partiality for the violin, to which, in liv. iv., Des Instruments, prop. 1, he gives the preference over all other instruments then in use, at a time when it was thought unworthy of being admitted into the concerts of other countries.
One proposition in this book (xxxiv.) is to inquire whether the French method of singing is the best of all possible methods? and he determines in the affirmative, not only with respect to this, but affirms, that of all those he ever heard sing in neighbouring countries, as in Spain, Germany, Flanders, and Italy, he had met with none who sang so agreeably as the French. ‘There may,’ says he, ‘be now and then a miraculous performer in other countries, but I speak here in general.’
He mentions recitative as a thing little practised in France, for want of courage. The Italians, he observes, succeed in this species of singing, which Giacomo Peri had invented at Florence at the beginning of the century. Here he speaks of several musical dramas in Italy, but does not call them operas. (Liv. vi. L’Art de bien chanter.)
ATHANASIUS KIRCHER was born at Fulda in Germany, in 1601. At the age of seventeen he entered the society of Jesuits, and, after going through a regular course of study, during which he distinguished himself by his vast attainments in literature and science, he became a teacher of philosophy, mathematics, and the Hebrew and Syriac languages, in the University of Wurtzburg in Franconia. In 1631, when the Swedes entered Germany under Gustavus Adolphus, he returned to France, and settled in the Jesuits’ college at Avignon, where he remained till 1635. He was then called to Rome to teach mathematics in the Roman college, where he continued during six years. He afterwards became professor of Hebrew in that city, and died there in 1680, having written and published twenty-two volumes in folio, eleven in quarto, and three in octavo. Kircher was more than ordinarily addicted to the study of hieroglyphics, and it is said that certain young scholars caused to be engraved some unmeaning fantastic characters or figures upon a shapeless stone, then buried it in ground which was shortly to be dug up. Upon digging the place, the stone was found, and, by the scholars who had hidden it, carried to Kircher as a most singular antique, who, quite in raptures, applied himself instantly to explain the characters, and, as he perhaps persuaded himself, and certainly attempted to persuade others, made them intelligible.
The chief work of Kircher is his Musurgia Universalis, which is written in Latin, in ten books, occupying two volumes in folio, the first containing seven books, the second three. The subjects on which he treats are principally the following—of the propagation of sound—of the elements of practical music—of harmonics, or the ratios of sounds—geometric and algebraic division of the monochord—new experiments in the construction of musical instruments—of melody, comprehending new secrets for producing every species of melody (!)—a parallel between ancient and modern music, pointing out the dignity of the ecclesiastical canto fermo, and the means of arriving at the pathetic style—of composition, or the combinations of sounds, and the application of air to poetical numbers and rhythms in all languages—musical wonders produced by hidden means, and new experiments of all kinds—and, lastly, of the various derivations of music, and the physical and artificial purposes to which it is, or may be, applied.
Kircher was the inventor of the Æolian harp, which he thus describes in his Musurgia, (lib. ix. 352.):—The instrument is not only new, but agreeable, and very easy of construction, and every one admires it who hears it in my museum. It is silent while the window remains shut, but when this is opened, sudden bursts of harmony surprise the auditor, who cannot tell whence they proceed, or by what kind of instrument they are produced, the sounds not resembling those of a stringed or a wind instrument, but are a mixture of both. This instrument is made of deal, is fifteen inches long, six broad, and three deep. It may be strung with fifteen strings, or more, all equal, and of catgut.
This work, says Dr. Burney, speaking of the Musurgia, which undoubtedly contains many curious and amusing portions, is, however, disgraced by the author’s credulity and ill-founded assertions. Kircher has been truly called ‘Vir immensæ quidem, sed indigestæ eruditionis’—a man of immense but indigested learning. Yet, with all its imperfections, the Musurgia contains much ‘curious and useful information for such as know how to sift truth from falsehood, and usefulness from futility;’ for a considerable portion of which, however, he was indebted to the Harmonie Universelle of Mersenne, which appeared in 1636; the Musurgia not having been published till fourteen years later.