Gabriel de La Charlonye and Mersenne. Interactions between two intellectuals about music
(2021) 19th Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music, Birmingham, 15-17 juillet 2021. — Location: Birmingham (15.July.2021)
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- Abstract
- Gabriel de La Charlonye (-1642) is a provincial notable and the typical image of the ‘honest man’ of the first decades of the seventeenth century. ‘Curious’ about everything – as Furetière defines it – he takes particular interest in history, science and music, subjects on which he writes in a relevant and detailed manner. We will focus here on his comments on music. Being an enlightened amateur, he kept up a correspondence with Mersenne, most notably on the subject of music theory, and provided him with some musical examples, including two rather subtle canons that Mersenne included in the Harmonie Universelle (1636). The discussions he had with the Minime father especially concerned the division of the scale, the value of tones, the polyphonic writing and the tuning of the lute. Beyond the man and his questioning, his musical tastes, his readings – Zarlino, Salinas, etc. – and his practical and theoretical knowledge of music, the analysis of his writings allows us to glimpse a universe in full mutation in which highly technical musical problems provide an opportunity for intellectuals to exchange their conceptions on the place and function of music in the society of the early modernity.
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Van Wymeersch, B. (2021). Gabriel de La Charlonye and Mersenne. Interactions between two intellectuals about music. 19th Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music, Birmingham, 15-17 juillet 2021., Birmingham. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/103497