Music, Science, and Metaphysical Empiricism in the Age of Beethoven

Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation

Information: 215-873-8289 or bbl@chemheritage.org

In the 18th century, as scientific empiricism came to dominate inquiry into the natural world, metaphysical speculation fell into disrepute. Because Enlightenment thinkers deemed the spirit, or immaterial world, inaccessible to the senses, they placed it outside the realm of knowledge. By the end of the 18th century, however, many thought that perhaps spirits could be observed: the question concerned not just the limits of the senses but also the limits of technology. In the search for instruments capable of registering invisible, spiritual forces, musical instruments proved among the most promising. In listening to keyboard improvisation the music critic Friedrich Rochlitz discovered a microscope for the soul. In Beethoven’s instrumental music E. T. A. Hoffmann discovered an “unknown realm” of spirits. Though such early Romantic critics have traditionally been seen as developing a religious reverence toward works of art, placing their writings in scientific context reveals a commitment to empiricism and technology as the means to gain knowledge of metaphysical realms. This presentation will explore how in the Age of Beethoven musicians and scientists alike probed the limits of the knowable and turned to technology to extend its boundaries.

Deirdre Loughridge is a Ph.D. candidate in music history at the University of Pennsylvania and a Mellon Graduate Research Fellow of the Penn Humanities Forum. She is currently completing her dissertation “Technologies of the Invisible: Optical Instruments and Musical Romanticism,” which explores how scientific instruments and optical entertainments informed early Romantic music aesthetics and listening practices. She has presented papers at such conferences as the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and the American Musicological Society, and has published on music and optical technologies in the Journal of Musicology.