Harmonious Triads: Physicists, Musicians, and Instrument Makers in Nineteenth-Century Germany (review)

The relationship between music and science has intrigued a succession of scholars. Interpreting the term 'science' in a broad sense, the subtopics are diverse. Works have been published, for example, on Pythagorean mathematics, harmonics, and the music of the spheres; on the medieval conception of music as a part of the quadrivium; on the rise of acoustics and the interactions between scientists and music theorists during the Scientific Revolution; on the rise of positivism and science in the late nineteenth century and its impact on music theory; on the 'scientific' (in the Babbittian sense) nature of music theory, and so on. The list could continue.

Curiously enough, in this roughly chronological outline, the early to mid-nineteenth century did not receive as much academic attention as the periods that immediately precede or follow it. I say 'curiously' because this period is not only intrinsically important to the history of science proper, but is also significant in terms of its contributions to the complex relationships among science, economy, general intellectual history, literature, art, and music.

Myles W. Jackson's Harmonious Triads is a project that fills this gap. Published as part of the series 'Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology' (general editor: Jed Z. Buchwald), the book complements existing scholarship on various levels. Since it is written by a historian of science, the book presents a perspective different from that of musicologists and thus deserves a cross-disciplinary readership. As suggested by its self-explanatory subtitle, the book deals with the interrelations among three groups of people in nineteenth-century Germany: physicists, musicians, and musical instrument makers. In many parts of the book, the story unfolds around artisans. Musical instrument makers, who usually play supporting roles (at best) in many studies, become the main actors in this book. The title evokes Johannes Lippius's notion of trias harmonica, although it does not seem that Jackson had this association in mind when writing the book. Still, we may play with this metaphor in the sense that he has shifted (i.e. inverted) the emphasis in the relational dynamics among music, science, and technology by bringing the relatively unknown musical instrument makers to light.

Regarding the title, two further things should be noted. First, the shape of the relational network described in this book is not a 'triad' because there are more than three parties in this complicated story. Jackson's notion of 'musicians' encompasses not just composers and performers but also musical pedagogues, music theorists, and critics. The participating actors in Jackson's story also include natural philosophers, writers, and even publishers. In addition, the boundaries between these categories of professions are not clearly demarcated. I would go even further and say that Jackson's intention was to highlight the messiness of the borders between pure science, music, culture, society, politics, and technology. By noting the contextual dependency and overlaps among these areas, he is suggesting a much more complex network with hazy boundaries between categories—a 'seamless web', in Thomas Hughes's expression. Jackson's sometimes arduous and intricate narrative style as an actual mirror image serves of one of the book's main claims, namely the importance of recognizing the existence of complex networks among a host of fields and professions.

For instance, Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni, whose life and achievements are discussed in depth in chapter 2, is a typical example of how one person can be a physical acoustician and an instrument maker at the same time. Chladni's achievement is mainly known to us through the famous Chladni plates, which reveal various vibrating modes on surfaces by sand patterns showing nodal points. Here, however, Jackson focuses instead on Chladni's invention of new musical instruments such as the euphone and the clavicylinder and how his scientific findings were applied to them. Jackson's exploration of the unknown Chladni is based upon Chladni's...