Author: SMITH (Robert):
Title: Harmonics, or The Philosophy of Musical Sounds.
Description: Cambridge, Printed by J. Bentham...and Sold...by W. Thurlbourn..., 1749. FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. xv [xvi contents], 292 [293 - 303 Index, 304 Corrections & Additions, 305 advert, 306 blank], 25 folding engraved plates, additional printed tables inserted between pp. 174 - 15, 182 - 183 (folding), and 238 - 239, recently rebound in quarter straight-grain morocco, gilt spine, morocco labels. A very good copy. Smith (1689 - 1768) trained as a mathematician and was Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge for forty-four years (1716 - 1760). Although his work on harmonics has a mathematical basis, he approaches the problems of tuning keyboard instruments as a musician would. Commenting on the book some thirty-five years later, another commentator on the aesthetics of music, Thomas Robertson (d. 1799), author of An Inquiry into the Fine Arts, called it "a work of ingenuity, as well as of great labour"; but, damning with faint praise, he added, "but who ventures to peruse it? The accomplished mathematician, in the first page almost, takes leave of his reader; and, plunging at once into the recesses of abstraction, may be said never to have been heard of since; so few of the learned themselves pretending to have followed him." Geoffrey Canton in the new Oxford DNB is a bit more appreciative: "Music was both Smith's pastime and his other main scientific interest. He was an accomplished performer on several instruments, particularly the violoncello, and possessed a 'correct ear'. In his Harmonics he advocated the mean-tone temperament or method of tuning keyboard instruments. In the same work he contributed to the mathematical theory of music with an extended discussion of equal harmonic intervals."

Keywords: music mathematics prose


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