Bidspirit auction | DESCARTES (René). MUSICAE Compendium. Amstelodami.

DESCARTES (René). MUSICAE Compendium. Amstelodami. 1683. - DESCARTES (René) MUSICAE Compendium . Sumptibus Societatis. Amstelodami: Ex Typographia Blaviana, 1683. 50 pp.: il.; 4.º; 205 mm. Fourth Latin edition of Descartes' first writing. The ”Musicae Compendium” was written in 1618, when the young philosopher was only twenty-two years old, and given as a New Year's gift to his friend and mentor, the mathematician and physicist Isaac Beeckman. It is a brief treatise on musical theory in which Descartes addresses the acoustic foundations of music, the nature of consonances, the degree of consonance of the third, and the rational legitimation of dissonance by syncopation – anticipating the foundations of a theory of musical affections based on reason. The work remained unpublished during the author's lifetime; it was first published in Utrecht in 1650, a few months after Descartes' death, from a manuscript of unidentified provenance. Latin editions followed in 1656, 1657 and the present edition of 1683, as well as English (1653), French and Dutch translations. The volume includes musical diagrams and woodcut geometric figures interspersed throughout the text. René Descartes (La Haye-en-Touraine, 1596 – Stockholm, 1650), philosopher, mathematician, and scientist, is considered the founder of modern rationalism and one of the creators of analytic geometry. The ”Musicae Compendium” is the only musical work attributed to him, and it testifies to the breadth of his intellectual interests during his formative years, preceding all his major philosophical and scientific works. Wanted. ⚑ Auto-translated via Google Translate