The Eloquent Science of Music: Marin Mersenne's Uses of Rhetoric in the “Harmonie Universelle” (2012)
Redwood, Andre de Oliviera (Author)
Yale University
McCreless, Patrick
Edition Details: Advisor: McCreless, Patrick
Physical Details: 249 pp.
Language: English
This study examines the relationship between music and rhetoric in the Harmonie Universelle (1636), the music-theoretical magnum opus of seventeenth-century clergyman and polymath Marin Mersenne. Although Mersenne's work is widely and routinely acknowledged as a major contribution to the history of music theory, his contribution is usually thought to lie not in his discussion of rhetoric, but in his investigations into the science of music, particularly as it pertained to the acoustical basis of musical sound. This dissertation argues that not only does Mersenne offer a number of analogies between music and rhetoric, but that he also, and more importantly, posits the relationship between the two disciplines as engaging in a mutual--rather than unidirectional--exchange. Mersenne's understanding of the relationship between music and rhetoric thus challenges the view, widely held within the history of music theory, that seventeenth-century theorists adapted concepts and terminology from rhetoric while being able to offer little in return. The first chapter argues that our inattention to Mersenne's contribution as a theorist of music and rhetoric originates in the long-held perception that only a small number of theorists, almost all of them Germans, approached the subject in a systematic way. This chapter proposes that in order to understand Mersenne's adaptations, we must broaden our understanding of rhetoric to include not only the study of stylistic and formal concerns, but also those of creation and delivery, Chapter 2 shows that Mersenne's education in rhetoric at the hands of his Jesuit teachers included both an induction into the world of Classical learning and a practical training in persuasion; his early education coupled with his adult commitment to the Order of Minims meant that his ideas about rhetoric would always be bound up with the Christian imperative to preach. Chapters 3 and 4 provide a close reading of passages from the Harmonie Universelle, with the first chapter of the pair exploring how rhetoric aids the theory and practice of music, and the second examining the ways in which music theory aids the orator. The concluding chapter shows that Mersenne's attempt to theorize delivery--the rhetorical subject that most occupies him--rests upon his interest in the physical, physiological, and spiritual properties of the voice. As the product of a vibrating, sound-producing body emanating from an animate being endowed with a soul, the voice serves as a nexus between Mersenne's interest in the science of sound, his theories of music and rhetoric, and his belief in a divine universal order.
...MoreDescription Cited in ProQuest Diss. & Thes. (2012). ProQuest Doc. ID 1039181886.
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