Ren é Descartes pioneered the “ new philosophy ” through his achievements in mathematics,
natural science, and metaphysics, yet his work in music has remained relatively unknown.
He himself was diffident about his musical knowledge and accomplishments, though he
first found his voice addressing musical questions. His work on music has many connec-
tions with his new physics and his view of the cosmos as a fluid continuum, whose vortices
and motions explain light and celestial mechanics.
At age twenty-one, Descartes wrote his earliest essay, Compendium musicae ( Compen-
dium of Music , 1618), when he had just begun his career as a gentleman-soldier, supporting
the Netherlands in its rebellion against Spanish overlordship. Stationed in Brabant, where
peace then prevailed, Descartes had some leisure to think, though he wrote hastily, “ in the
midst of turmoil and uneducated soldiers. ” He formed an important friendship with Isaac
Beeckman, to whom he offered the Compendium as a New Year ’ s gift, seven weeks after
they first met. Descartes asked that he keep his essay to himself, “ forever hidden in the
privacy of your desk or your library; it should not be submitted to the judgment of others, ”
because it was written “ for your sake only, ” in the turbulent circumstances of an army
camp “ by a man without occupation or office, busy with entirely different thoughts and
activities. ”^1
Eight years older than Descartes, Beeckman had studied theology, but doctrinal disputes
prevented him from teaching in that field. He then worked making candles and water-
conduits, eventually becoming a school administrator. Though he graduated in medicine
the year he met Descartes, he was self-taught in science and mathematics; at times, he
rediscovered results that had long been known, but he also took a fresh view of those
fields, not having been steeped in Aristotelian natural philosophy.^2 Though Beeckman
worked in a tremendous variety of fields, including engineering, mechanics, astronomy,
logic, medicine, and music, he never published anything. Nonetheless, already in 1613 he
had stated a principle of inertia and had accounted for gravity as a “ force pulling by little
jerks ” ; in their boldness, these insights parallel and even surpass Galileo ’ s work, though
Beeckman ’ s notebooks remained private communications until their rediscovery and
publication in the twentieth century.^3
barré
(Barré)
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