Harmonious Triads: Physicists, Musicians, and Instrument Makers in Nineteenth-Century Germany (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Harmonious Triads: Physicists, Musicians, and Instrument Makers in Nineteenth-Century Germany Deborah Jean Warner (bio) Harmonious Triads: Physicists, Musicians, and Instrument Makers in Nineteenth-Century Germany. By Myles W. Jackson . Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006. Pp. x+395. $40. In this ambitious, demanding, and fascinating book, Myles Jackson examines the intersections of three ostensibly independent communities and shows the several ways in which they helped shape one another. He terms this work a "socio-cultural history of science," but actually presents much material relevant to the history of technology. Jackson begins with the cultured upper-middle class that was striving to shape a liberal and united Germany, noting that musicians and scientists were part of this culture, and often members of the same family, and were thus expected to know and understand one another. He then moves on to E. F. Chladni, a nomadic acoustician who is best remembered by historians of science for having devised the acoustic plates that were long a standard fixture of physics laboratories. In his day, however, Chladni was also known for having devised two musical instruments: the euphone, a modification of the glass harmonica, and the clavicylinder. In a chapter on "Singing Savants," Jackson describes the music at the inaugural (1822) meeting of the Association of German Investigators of Nature and Physicians, the first large-scale German scientific society. Not just pleasant entertainment, this music was understood as a mechanism for building a community of savants who could see each other only on rare occasions. Similar musical performances would be found in many subsequent scientific conferences. Jackson devotes one chapter to exploring the often tense relationships between various musical ideologies. In an account of the new instruments that produced the romantic music favored by audiences who expected to be moved, Jackson notes, ironically, that the free vibrating reeds that made [End Page 856] these instruments so expressive had been developed for use in automata, in many ways the epitome of the mechanical. The second half of the book addresses the various attempts to make music more precise. William Weber, a physicist known to historians for his precision measurements and his work with electrodynamics, had a close relationship with Chladni, and his "experimental prowess and his introduction to wave theory originated in his early fascination with acoustics" (p. 111). He undertook his investigations of adiabatic phenomena in large part to improve the manufacture of German musical instruments, and his work was later used by physiologists and anatomists who hoped to understand the human voice. Johann Heinrich Scheibler, an industrialist and amateur musician, sought mechanical means of simplifying the work done in his silk factory as well as the work of organ and piano tuners. After a lengthy discussion of musical temperaments, Jackson addresses the many efforts that were made to standardize musical tempo by means of such devices as the metronome, and to standardize pitch by means of the tuning fork. The final chapter concerns musical pedagogy, calling attention to a number of mechanical contraptions that were designed to discipline the hands of young piano players. It also addresses physicists' efforts to analyze and quantify virtuosity. To help Anglophone readers appreciate the culture of which he writes, Jackson uses many original words and phrases (usually German, but occasionally French) and follows them with an English translation presented in inconsistent typography. If there is a pattern controlling the use of italics and quotation marks, I could not figure it out. I would also note that the images, though well chosen and well reproduced, lack suitable bibliographic information. Deborah Jean Warner Deborah Warner is curator of physical sciences at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. Copyright © 2007 The Society for the History of Technology