ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a discussion of the Italian mathematician pietro Mengoli, whose discussion of music had a unique and elaborate anatomical basis. Musical sound and its apprehension were, in turn, often separated from more general discussions of sound, and considered in relative isolation as cases for which special explanations might be necessary. Two distinct explanations of the transmission of sound had been proposed in ancient Greek works. In England, a sophisticated discussion of the nature of sound was provided in 1615 by Helkiah Crooke, whom the authors met as an anatomist. Crooke's account of hearing continued his attempt to separate the 'action' which constituted sound from the motion of the air which transmitted it: while the medium of sound would 'beat' upon the membrane, 'the image of the sound' would be 'received in this membrane without the matter'.
