Raison et perception : fonder l'harmonie au XVIIIe siècle - Charrak, André (Paris Vrin, 2001)
The major issues at stake in the confrontation between music and the mathematisation of phenomena are well illustrated by Jean-Philippe Rameau's attempt to found the system of harmony and the feeling that manifests it in nature. This undertaking combined a new and original conception of the principles of musical writing, more traditional arithmetical speculations and the experimental results of a physics of vibration. In this respect, the Ramist theory provided the Encyclopaedists with grounds for an epistemological reflection on the conditions for a legitimate application of the sciences to one another. But the ambition to discover the natural origin of harmony also mobilised hypotheses about musical perception, and gave rise to exemplary opposition from Rousseau and Diderot.The problem of the foundations of harmony thus sheds new light on Enlightenment empiricism, as a theory of knowledge and as a philosophy of perception. (Translated with DeepL.com)
Includes bibliographical references (p. [297]-313) and index.
Keywords: 18th Century (1701-1800); Music philosophy and esthetics; Harmony; Music history