ABSTRACT
This chapter turns to methods of collecting and corresponding in Mersenne’s work on music. Offering a possible way to read his desire for ever more observations and examples, I emphasize the role of curiosity, the term by which many of Mersenne’s contemporaries described his state of mind and scope of interest. The chapter first looks at Mersenne’s notion of curiosity and its relation to collecting practices, before considering some of the ways in which physical collections, letters, and images were utilized to gather new examples and experiences.
