makingandknowing - annotation plan-Ben Hiebert

Recipe:

French transcription (tc)

<id>p104v_4</id>

<head>Espinette jouant toute seule</head>

<ab>Fais un axe tout entourne de roues percees tout aultour<lb/>
en lespesseur et attaches des <m>plumes</m> co{mm}e pour cistre ou<lb/>
espinette & les dispose selon la chancon que tu vouldras<lb/>
faire dire y laissant <del>telle</del> distance convenable Et tourna{n}t<lb/>
laxe ou par toymesme ou par ressort dhorloge ton invention<lb/>
seffectuera</ab>
</div>

English Translation

<id>p104v_a4</id>

<head>Spinet playing by itself</head>

<ab>Make an axis surrounded with wheels, pierce all around in its thickness and attach some feathers [as you would do] for a timbrel or a spinet and arrange them according to the song you want it to play, leaving a suitable distance. And, turning the axis by yourself or using a clock spring, your invention will work.</ab>
</div>

1. What is the main focus of your annotation?
Within the context of Ms. Fr. 640, the “Spinet playing by itself” recipe is unusual in a number of respects. For one, it is one of the few music-related recipes in the manuscript, the only other (that I could find) being a recipe for lute varnish (p098r_a1, see annotation Pope and Marris). The author-practioner’s other references to music and musical materials are brief and oblique: he mentions guitar makers in the entries on lavender spike oil varnish (p004r_1) and fish glue (p007r_a4), and he suggests harpsichord strings can be used for arranging and positioning animal specimens (p112v_1, p165v_a1). In addition, the spinet recipe represents one in a handful of instances in the manuscript of the concept/term of “invention.” Moreover, to many of us today, an instrument “playing by itself” represents a mechanical imitation of the normally human act of creating music with an acoustic instrument. In what ways does this sort of “imitation” relate, if at all significantly, to the author-practioner’s impulse to imitate nature writ large throughout the manuscript?

Through historical, text-based research, this annotation will explore the apparent peculiarities of the self-playing spinet recipe and seek to place it in its broader 16th century context. This will involve investigations into the history of keyboard-instrument building in 16th-century France and Toulouse, the history of self-playing instruments more specifically, 16th-century notions of invention and imitation, and the history of machines and automata (see preliminary bibliography below). Some object-based research may be possible as well, as the Metropolitan Museum of Art houses a collection of European keyboard instruments.

Despite the practical challenges that would inevitably arise, reconstruction would yield interesting insights into the spinet recipe. The recipe is vague and omits a great deal of necessary information, including measurements, materials used, and how the implement would actually be positioned on and affixed to the spinet. Reconstruction could help in exploring some such areas of ambiguity. Furthermore, practical reconstruction could help us to understand the author-practioner’s amount of firsthand knowledge concerning music and musical materials. The scant mentions of music in the manuscript seem to indicate little firsthand knowledge in this area, and yet, the direct, imperative tone of the recipe and the mentions of musical materials such as harpsichord strings elsewhere in the manuscript are suggestive of at least some level of personal involvement with musical instruments. By addressing the feasibility of the recipe, a practical investigation might clarify this level of personal involvement.

An authentic reconstruction would indeed be difficult, as the spinet is a rare historical instrument. However, I nevertheless wonder whether a partial/approximate reconstruction would still be beneficial. For instance, using a more conventional and readily available stringed-instrument such a piano or even a guitar would not, it seems to me, alter the plucking mechanism of the author-practioner’s implement all that much. Alternatively, a small, simple stringed instrument could be constructed.

2. What materials, tools, and techniques are part of your research?

Given the ambiguity of the recipe, identifying materials/tools needed poses many challenges. For the construction of a simple stringed instrument and the mechanism described by the recipe, here is a list of materials I find to be reasonable.
- o Wooden materials: base board, wood trim, dowels, wooden disks
- o Strings
  - § It seems that early modern harpsichords used iron or brass strings (Kottick, 77 & 79), so I believe modern steel guitar strings or something similar would be appropriate.
- o Feathers/Quills
  - § I have not been able to find which specific types of quills would be used in harpsichords built in 16th century France, though it seems perhaps crow quills may have been the norm before the development of plastic plectra in the modern era (Kottick 443).
- o Tuning pins/pegs
- o Nails
- o Wood glue
- o Tools: hammer, drill
Availability
- o The wooden items, wood glue: hardware stores such as Lowe’s or Home Depot
- o Tuning pins/pegs and guitar strings: local music stores should have these
- o Feathers/quills: I noticed there are goose quills in the lab inventory. There is also a feather shop in NYC: http://www.featherplace.com/feather-types.html
- o Tools: do we have access in the lab or elsewhere on campus?
Safety: The materials themselves listed here should not pose any serious safety concerns, but care will have to be taken in the use of tools.

3. Manuscript research

o Mentions to music/musical instruments: p098r_a1, p004r_1, p007r_a4, p112v_1, & p165v_a1
o Mentions to watchmakers/watch-mechanisms: p082r_a4

4. Historical research (see working bibliography below)

o Secondary sources on the history of automata in the 16th century and earlier
o Secondary sources on the history of keyboard instrument building in the 16th century
o Secondary sources on the history of mechanical instruments
o Early modern writings on mechanical instrument building (Kircher and Mersenne)

5. Object research

Through examining pictures of the automatic spinets constructed by the Biderman family of Augsburg, seemingly the most well-known constructors of automatic spinets in the 16th and 17th centuries, it appears that automatic keyboard instruments contemporaneous with Ms. Fr. 640 in fact operated on a very different mechanism. Instead of using quills that actually pluck the strings themselves (though perhaps my inference here is completely off?), the Biderman family’s spinets in fact used a cylinder/barrel studded with metal pins (a common mechanism of early modern clocks and automata) that actually operated the keys of the instrument, which in turn acted upon the strings as a spinet normally would. I may need to consult someone with more expertise to resolve this matter. Perhaps early music specialists in the music department here at Columbia could help me with this.

Working Bibliography

Bedini, Silvio A. “The Role of Automata in the History of Technology.” Technology and Culture 5, no. 1 (1964): 24–42. doi:10.2307/3101120.
Boalch, Donald H. (Donald Howard). Makers of the Harpsichord and Clavichord 1440-1840. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
Bowers, Q. David. Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments. Vestal, N.Y.: Vestal Press, 1972.
Cipolla, Carlo M. Clocks and Culture, 1300-1700. New York: Norton, 1977.
Crane, Frederick. “Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia Universalis (Rome, 1650) : The Section on Musical Instruments.” Theses and Dissertations, January 1, 1956. http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/5071.
Dear, Peter. Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Evelyn, John. Elysium Britannicum, or The Royal Gardens. Philadelphia, Pa: University of Pennsylvania Press, c2001.
Gozza, Paolo. Number to Sound [Electronic Resource] : The Musical Way to the Scientific Revolution. Dordrecht: Imprint: Springer, 2000.
Haspels, Jan Jaap. Automatic Musical Instruments : Their Mechanics and Their Music, 1580 - 1820 = Automatische Muziekinstrumenten : Hun Mechaniek En Muziek, 1580 - 1820. Koedijk, [Netherlands]: Nirota, Muziekdruk C.V., c1987.
Kottick, Edward L. A History of the Harpsichord. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016.
Mersenne, Marin. Harmonie Universelle: The Books on Instruments. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1957.
Ord-Hume, Arthur W. J. G. Pianola : The History of the Self-Playing Piano. Boston: George Allen & Unwin, 1984.
Price, Derek J. de Solla. “Automata and the Origins of Mechanism and Mechanistic Philosophy.” Technology and Culture 5, no. 1 (1964): 9–23. doi:10.2307/3101119.
Riskin, Jessica. The Restless Clock : A History of the Centuries-Long Argument over What Makes Living Things Tick. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Truitt, E. R. Medieval Robots. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. https://muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/book/39875.
Vergil, Polydore. Beginnings and Discoveries : Polydore Vergil’s De Inventoribus Rerum ; an Unabridged Translation and Edition with Introduction, Notes and Glossary. Nieuwkoop: De Graaf Publishers, 1997.
Voskuhl, Adelheid. Androids in the Enlightenment: Mechanics, Artisans, and Cultures of the Self. University of Chicago Press, 2013. http://chicago.universitypressscholarship.com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/view/10.7208/chicago/9780226034331.001.0001/upso-9780226034027.

Weekly Log

11/21-11/28

I met with Dr. Camilla Cavicchi, a specialist in 16th century instruments, to get her thoughts on the recipe. She also believes that the mechanism would operate by actually plucking the strings, and she called my attention to similarities with the hurdy gurdy or "organistrum". Donna, Naomi, Sau-yi and myself visited the MakerSpace and talked to Scott there about safety and how to move forward with reconstruction. On my own, in preparation for reconstruction, I continued to look through the manuscript in order to find out what types of materials might have been used in this recipe (particularly wood and glue) as well as secondary sources to look for materials used in 16th-century spinet making.