ABSTRACT
Throughout this book, I have highlighted the evidential and epistemic potential of music and have looked at different ways in which sound was turned into evidence for something beyond its immediate sounding context. Marin Mersenne believed that harmony was found in the material constitution of a trumpet and the number of air vibrations in a composition by court composer Boësset. From experiments with echoes and overtones to the recording of all possible melodies using eight notes, Mersenne was especially concerned with making universal harmony audible, visible, and palpable. A wide variety of experiences were taken as evidence for universal harmony, such as the bodily experience of standing close to an organ or travelogues on music making in the Americas. As a central figure in the correspondence networks across Europe, Mersenne experimented with the circulation of questions and images, probing his correspondents on a wide variety of topics. Paying attention to the geographies of scientific investigation, I have focused on spaces such as the instrument maker’s workshop and the cabinet of curiosity and have looked at the different social and epistemic processes that took place within such spaces, and where boundaries between theorists and practitioners were drawn.
