Mersenne on Keyboard Tuning

Abstract

Mersenne is an interesting figure in the history of keyboard temperaments not only for what he said but also for what he stimulated others, including Titelouze, Descartes and Rousseau, to say.1 It is true that he tended to combine sophistication and naivety as perhaps only a very kindly and cloistered savant could do, and that his first-hand grasp of the craftsmanly and even mathematical aspects of temperament was less secure than that of a Zarlino or a Sauveur. (In the Latin counterpart of Harmonie Universelle, the Harmonicorum libri of 1636, he gave a prescription for tuning the organ which is, as far as I can tell, inept by any standard.') Nevertheless, he is one of the outstanding seventeenth-century writers on tunings as well as other aspects of acoustics and organology; his treatment of the subject over the years reflects the growth of an intellectual personality of considerable importance in the history of science as well as musicology; and his instructions in French for meantone temperament may have exercised a particularly curious influence in the stylistic development of the French harpsicord repertoire. Perhaps the fairest way to summarize Mersenne's views on keyboard tuning is to discuss in turn his attitude toward the three main varieties that he dealt with: just intonation, meantone temperament, and equal