Music and Physics: A Cultural,Interdisciplinary History |
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| Authors: | Myles W Jackson |
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| Institution: | The Dibner Family Professor of the History of Science and Technology and Senior Faculty Fellow of the Othmer Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, Polytechnic University, Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences, 6 MetroTech Center, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA. |
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| Abstract: | This essay investigates the triangular exchange among physicists, musicians, and instrument makers in nineteenth‐century Germany by proffering a material, cultural, and interdisciplinary history. It does so by analyzing four concrete examples of such exchanges: the relationship between musical automata and virtuosi, the reed pipe as an object of music and scientific measurement, the history of standardizing performance pitch, and the attempts to measure musical virtuosity. The goal of the essay is to suggest ways in which interdisciplinary cultural histories, which take the scientific content seriously, can be an improvement upon purely disciplinary histories. |
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| Keywords: | automata music organs physics pitch reed pipes virtuoso Automaten Musik Orgel Physik Tonhö he Virtuoso Zungenpfeifen |
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