Left: Chladni figures. Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni, Traité d’acoustique, 1809. Collection of the Wagner Free Institute of Science Library. Right: Ascidiacea.Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
[via Observatory]
Illustrated Lecture with Emily I. Dolan, University of Pennsylvania
Date: Thursday, May 8
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $8
Location: The Morbid Anatomy Museum (New Space) 424A 3rd Avenue (Corner of 7th Street and 3rd Avenue), Brooklyn, NY
Subway: 4th Av – 9th Street (R – F – G)
Presented by Morbid Anatomy
What is nature’s voice? Does it understand harmony? Does it know melody? Can nature sing? During the early nineteenth century, many inventors and acousticians were fascinated by the idea of harnessing natural tones. The idea that music and nature are closely bound is an ancient one that stretches back to the harmony of the spheres. The “nature music” of this period, however, was understood not as silent mathematical proportions, but rather as actual sound: beautiful, ethereal tones that were thought to linger from a prelapsarian time. Musicologist Emily I. Dolan explores the many attempts to organize and control the voice of nature by means of new, and often fantastical, musical instruments.
Emily I. Dolan is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania. She specializes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century musical culture; in particular she is interested in the intersections between the histories of music, science, and technology. Her first book, The Orchestral Revolution: Haydn and the Technologies of Timbre (Cambridge University Press) was published last year.