ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the role of musical instruments throughout Marin Mersenne’s work on universal harmony. Although his interest in instruments and their makers is often mentioned, this encounter has received little attention. This chapter investigates what information Mersenne hoped to find at the maker’s workshop and how he went about gathering such knowledge. After this investigation of the social world of instruments makers, I consider their use as experimental objects. Looking at Mersenne’s efforts to demonstrate the naturalness of the consonances, I show that it was ultimately not the monochord but the trumpet that took on a central role for Mersenne.
