Literature, Music, and Science in Nineteenth Century Russian Culture: Prince Odoyevskiy’s Quest for a Natural Enharmonic Scale

2002 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitri Bayuk
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Musical Scale ◽  
Russian Music ◽  
Positive Science ◽  
Equal Temperament ◽  
And Mathematics

ArgumentAn attempt to understand and analyze a unique nineteenth-century musical instrument – the enharmonic piano from the collection of the Glinka Museum of Russian Musical Culture in Moscow – directs a historian towards Prince Vladimir Odoyevskiy’s efforts to construct a special musical scale corresponding to the indigenous tradition of Russian music. Known today mostly as an author of Romantic short stories, Odoyevskiy was also an amateur scientist and musician, a follower of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie, and a mystic. He tried to design his new musical scale and instruments on the basis of experimental science and mathematics. Odoyevskiy’s life-long search for a synthesis of literature, music, positive science, and spirituality demonstrates how the adaptation and appropriation of European arts preceded and paved the way towards the appropriation of European sciences among the educated élite in nineteenth-century Russia. The tensions inherent in the process led to Odoyevskiy’s nationalist rebellion against the European musical standard, the equal temperament. His call for a different musical scale remained largely ignored in the nineteenth century, until the topic was raised anew by twentieth-century composers and musicians.

scholarly journals Revising the musical equal temperament

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Haye Hinrichsen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Frequency Ratio ◽  
Western Music ◽  
Equal Temperament ◽  
Frequency Ratios ◽  
High Degree

Western music is predominantly based on the equal temperament with a constant semitone frequency ratio of 21/12. Although this temperament has been in use since the nineteenth century and in spite of its high degree of symmetry, various musicians have repeatedly expressed their discomfort with the harmonicity of certain intervals. Recently it was suggested that this problem can be overcome by introducing a modified temperament with a constant but slightly increased frequency ratio. In this paper we confirm this conjecture quantitatively. Using entropy as a measure for harmonicity, we show numerically that the harmonic optimum is in fact obtained for frequency ratios slightly larger than 21/12. This suggests that the equal temperament should be replaced by a harmonized stretched temperament as a new standard.

scholarly journals The Enlightenment Philosophy Impact on the Musical Culture of Russia in the 18th–19th Centuries

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 30-37
Author(s):  
A.V. Kamenets ◽  
◽  
L.V. Molina ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Real Life ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
Russian Music ◽  
Democratic Attitudes ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Life Problems ◽  
West European ◽  
Enlightenment Philosophy

this article discusses the key ideas of the philosophy of the Enlightenment (applying democratic attitudes, referring to real-life problems and issues, promoting humaneness and humanism) that have influenced the Russian musical culture. A connection is traced between the worldview of the West-European philosophers of the Enlightenment and the works of European composers and musicians that influenced the Russian musical culture in the 18th and 19th centuries. The article highlights how the philosophy of the Enlightenment affected the development of the operatic and singing art in Russia and how it in many ways dictated subsequent trends in the Russian music.

Microtonality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gayle Young
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Equal Temperament

Microtonality refers to any use of pitch that departs from twelve equally-spaced tones per octave (twelve-tone equal temperament), the standard tuning established in Europe since the nineteenth century. This tuning has come to dominate music internationally through the widespread use of mass-produced instruments with standard tunings, such as electronic keyboards.

When a Daring Chemistry Meets a Boring Chemistry: The Reception of Mendeleev’s Periodic System in Sweden

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders Lundgren
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Periodic System ◽  
Initial Step ◽  
The Other ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
History Of Chemistry ◽  
System P ◽  
History Of ◽  
Per Se

The reception of Mendeleev’s periodic system in Sweden was not a dramatic episode. The system was accepted almost without discussion, but at the same time with no exclamation marks or any other outbursts of enthusiasm. There are but a few weak short-lived critical remarks. That was all. I will argue that the acceptance of the system had no overwhelming effect on chemical practice in Sweden. At most, it strengthened its characteristics. It is actually possible to argue that chemistry in Sweden was more essential for the periodic system than the other way around. My results might therefore suggest that we perhaps have to reevaluate the role of Mendeleev’s system in the history of chemistry. Chemistry in Sweden at the end of the nineteenth century can be characterized as a classifying science, with chemists very skilled in analysis, and as mainly an atheoretical science, which treated theories at most only as hypothesis—the slogan of many chemists being “facts persist, theories vanish.” Thanks to these characteristics, by the end of the nineteenth century, chemistry in Sweden had developed into, it must be said, a rather boring chemistry. This is obviously not to say that it is boring to study such a chemistry. Rather, it gives us an example of how everyday science, a part of science too often neglected but a part that constitutes the bulk of all science done, is carried out. One purpose of this study is to see how a theory, considered to be important in the history of chemistry, influenced everyday science. One might ask what happened when a daring chemistry met a boring chemistry. What happened when a theory, which had been created by a chemist who has been described as “not a laboratory chemist,” met an atheoretical experimental science of hard laboratory work and, as was said, the establishment of facts? Furthermore, could we learn something about the role of the periodic system per se from the study of such a meeting? Mendeleev’s system has often been considered important for teaching, and his attempts to write a textbook are often taken as the initial step in the chain of thoughts that led to the periodic system.

Science with a Soul

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-262
Author(s):  
Deborah K. Manson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
Historical Society ◽  
Active Participant ◽  
Religious Ideology ◽  
Individual Character ◽  
Divinity School ◽  
The Mind

From the 1840s through to the end of his life in 1888, James Freeman Clarke’s influence permeated newspapers, churches, and lecture halls in Boston. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Clarke was an educated and active participant in his community and a respected voice amongst Boston intellectuals. At a time when sciences of the mind were rapidly expanding, Clarke neither ceded authority nor turned a blind eye. Instead, he studied emerging psychologies himself, approaching them as ways to enhance his understanding of the human being—body, soul, and spirit. In his private writings, including journals and letters, Clarke discusses his applications of experimental science, and he appears especially enthusiastic about mesmerism. However, from the pulpit and the lectern, Clarke was almost silent on the topic. This article examines Clarke’s private letters, journals, and sermon notes, accessed in the archives at the Massachusetts Historical Society, for evidence of the role mesmerism played in Clarke’s religious ideology, specifically his concept of man’s physical and spiritual constitution. For Clarke, mesmerism allowed an intimate incorporation of the body with theology, for through it the body became a conduit to the soul and to individual character. Clarke’s interest in and practice of mesmerism reveals it as an underground force that not only shaped his thoughts and theology, but also influenced a number of fellow theologians and intellectuals during the mid-nineteenth century.

scholarly journals Vernon Herbert Blackman, 1872-1967

1968 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 37-60 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
High Standard ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
The University ◽  
Freedom Of Action ◽  
Plant Behaviour

V. H. Blackman’s academic career spanned an era during which botany became an experimental subject and the interpretation of plant behaviour in terms of contemporary chemistry, physics and mathematics was an exciting new prospect. In Britain during the latter part of the nineteenth century, as he himself remarked, classification was pursued with an enthusiasm which almost excluded other aspects of botany; a circumstance attributed to the expansion of Empire which gave access to many new floras. Blackman belonged to the generations of men whose schooling was entirely in the classical tradition but who yet became professors of science subjects. In the nineteenth century such men expected to teach and discuss every aspect of their chosen discipline and prosecution of research was not an obligation for the teacher; the incentive was curiosity and the reward intellectual. Vocational opportunities were limited to the small university community, the schools and the herbaria of the state institutions. The men who accepted these posts were usually characterized by a strict sense of duty, a high standard of integrity, and a respect for learning. In the university they had almost complete freedom of action and time to think. Blackman was a fastidious and somewhat shy man who maintained the exacting standards of such scholars. He was always immaculate in appearance, unfailingly courteous and never apparently hurried. He trusted his staff and students absolutely and in an effortless and perhaps unconscious manner exercised a remarkable and benign authority which served to impress on those who worked with him, to their lasting benefit, the value of his tenets. Vernon Herbert Blackman was born on 8 January 1872 at a house in York Road, Lambeth, near Waterloo Station. His father, Frederick Blackman, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., practised medicine in the area which included slum streets into which his sisters were not allowed.

How distant is gurbet? Refik Halid’s representation of Arabs in Gurbet Hikayeleri — with a note on Ottoman and Turkish Orientalisms

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-173
Author(s):  
Hakan T. Karateke
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Definition Of

This article explores Refik Halid’s (Karay) reflections of his time in exile in Bilad al- Sham and other localities on the Arabian peninsula, as collected in semiautobiographical short stories written during the 1930s and published as Gurbet Hikayeleri (Exile Stories), and compares Refik Halid’s views of the Arab locals with the attitudes described by Ussama Makdisi and Edhem Eldem as “Ottoman Orientalism” and “Turkish Orientalism” respectively. However, I am inclined not to restrict such belittling attitudes towards the subjects who lived in the cultural peripheries of the empire to the nineteenth century. It seems necessary to develop a definition of Ottoman Orientalism that does not restrict the term to the age of reforms, one that can place the perceptions and tensions between groups of people within the empire in their historical perspective.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document