ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the relation between musical scholarship and transcultural contacts by investigating the moment when scientific debates on harmony and rationality in music gained new urgency in the context of mercantile networks and colonialism. I show how for several years in the early 1630s, the antiquarian Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc circulated requests to the eastern Mediterranean about various aspects of music on behalf of Marin Mersenne. I argue that it contains key insights into understanding how musical scholarship in early modern Europe turned toward music outside Europe.
