Giovanni Battista Della Porta’s Experiments with Musical Instruments
Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: A section of Giovanni Battista Della Porta’s Magia naturalis (1589) celebrates the powers of musical instruments. Most of these powers are rooted in neo-Platonist natural magic: Della Porta explains that the materials of instruments retain their original properties, shaping the body and soul of the listener through their mutual sympathy or antipathy. In a series of three demonstrations presented at the end of this section on music, however, Della Porta uses musical instruments in a different fashion: like telescopes and other scientific instruments of the early modern era, his lyra—likely a lira da braccio, which held pride of place in Italian academies of the sixteenth century—becomes a vehicle for open-ended discovery and the creation of new knowledge.
Author: Rebecca Cypess
Institution: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funders: Royal Society, University of Cambridge
OpenAlex ID: W2405086742