Tronchin, Lamberto - Knight, David J.. Music and sound of the 17 th Century: Athanasius Kircher and his Phonosophia anacamptica. (2017).
| Name(s) | Tronchin, Lamberto; Knight, David J. |
|---|---|
| Title | Music and sound of the 17 th Century: Athanasius Kircher and his Phonosophia anacamptica |
| Year | 2017 |
| Language(s) | eng |
| Contained in | The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 141 (2017) nr. 5 |
| Bibliographic level | Paper in journal |
Abstract[1]
In the 17th Century many Physicists, Mathematicians and Musicians dealt with the experiences of harmony, music, and sound propagation in enclosed interior spaces. Among them, Athanasius Kircher was one of the most influential researchers of his time. Born in Geisa, Thüringia (Germany), he became a Jesuit in 1608 and spent a large part of his life in Rome, where he died in 1680. During his lifetime, he wrote several books spanning a wide range of topics, including sound, music, and acoustics. One of these, the Phonurgia Nova, published in 1673, was almost ignored for hundreds of years. Phonurgia Nova was translated from the original Latin. It consists of two different books, the Phonosophia nova and the Phonosophia anacamptica. The former deals with the influence of music on human beings whereas the latter analysessound propagation in enclosed spaces. In this paper, the Authors present new achievements regarding some of the apparatuses that Kircher invented. Among all his marvelous sound machines, the Authors will describe some of Kircher’s items, including the tuba stentorophonica (the “loud trumpet”), the statua citofonica (the “talking statue”), the obiectum phonocampticum (the “phonocentric object”), the Ruota Cembalaria (the “sounding wheel”), the ancient Egyptian singing statue of Memnon, the Aeolian Harp, and the hydraulis (hydraulic organ). Some of these apparatuses were also recently partially realized by the Polish Pavilion during the Biennale of Venice in 2012, achieving a Special Mention from the international jury.
References
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