the ocular harpsichord of louis-bertrand castel - Gewina

Castel's ocular harpsichord 55
Another author, closely related to the musical world of Castel's age, who
discussed Castel's harpsichord was Francesco Algarotti. Voltaire had much
admired his book // Newtonianismo per le dame from 1737, written in the form
of a conversation between a teacher and his inquisitive pupil, a marquise, and it
was quickly translated into French and into many other languages as well.
Remarkably enough, considering the title of the book, in the part dealing with
optics Algarotti defended the vibration theory of Malebranche, in the form
Malebranche finally gave it to reconcile it with Newton's prism experiments. The
marquise accepted this theory, as she said because "the fraternity between sound
and light appeals to me", upon which her teacher answered: "I had expected,
Madame, that this fraternity would please you, and I am convinced that the
ocular harpsichord and its ocular music, which arc going to present you a new
brilliance, will be successful with you." What follow are a lot of jokes, but it
remains doubtful whether Algarotti wholly rejected the idea as such.'"^
The adoption of colour music as an art fully equal to music, interpreted as a
wholly formal art, later was the choice of Immanuel Kant in his Kritik der
Urteilskraft. Kant ordered the arts into three hierarchical pairs. First came
rhetoric and poetry, both relating the Verstand or understanding with the
imagination. Next came sculpture and painting, connected with the Sinnesanschauung
or sensory apperception and leaving the imagination a much
more modest role to play. Last came music and Farbenkunst, both acting purely
on the level of the sensations and not involving anything more than different
degrees of tension of the sense organs. Kant, in accordance with his acceptance
of Euler's vibration theory of light in 1755, connected the sensations of each art
with the velocity of the vibrations of the respective media. As he supposed the
existence of both tone and colour scales, his Farbenkunst cannot have been
anything else but Castel's colour music, but there is no explicit reference
Vergleichungen entwickcln und ihre Ordnung und Unordnung empfinden. DiB Empfinden
verursachet das Vergniigen und Anreilzen in alien Dingen, und das eigentliche Vergniigen der
Musik beslehel in dem, solchen Unterschied augcnblicklich, und nach und nach in kurtzer Zeit
mehrmals, zu bemercken. DiB erwecket die Scele, crhall sie beslandig munlcr, und vcrhindert. daO
sie nicht auf einen albemen Glcichlaut verfalll. Kurtz: Es ist unstreiiig, daB dicB Farbenspiel
ergetzen wird. Denn Musik ist nichts andcrs. als eine Ergetzlichkeit."
Algarotti. Newtonianisme, p. 222: "la fratemite du Son & de la Lumiere me louche"; "J'ai
bien juge, Madame, que cette fratemite vous plairoTt, & je ne desespere pas que le Clavecin des
couleurs, & la .Musique des yeux qui vont lui donner un lustre nouveau, ne fasse fortune aupres de
vous." Interestingly, the first extension the marquise thinks of is a "musique des ragouts", as did
Prevost and Hogarth. At a certain moment, when .Algarotti became too frivolous, the translator
defended Castel in a footnote! In the fully revised final edition of 1752 all references to Malebranche
had disappeared, but Castel's harpsichord was still there. The only joke left - if il was a
joke - was the statement that "on such an instrument the eyes enjoy arias by Pergolesi and
Rameau: and thanks to it it will be possible to have copied on cloth some lines sung by Caffariello.'
(Chapter 6 of any later edition.)