New Atlantis and Selections from the Sylva Sylvarum by Francis Bacon

Author:Francis Bacon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781913462307
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2020-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

[The rest was not perfected.]

Selections from the Sylva Sylvarum: Or a Natural History in Ten Centuries

by Francis Bacon

CENTURY II

Experiments in consort touching music.

Music, in the practice has been well pursued, and in good variety; but in the theory, and especially in the yielding of the causes of the practice, very weakly; being reduced into certain mystical subtleties of no use and not much truth. We shall, therefore, after our manner, join the contemplative and active together.

101. All sounds are either musical sounds which we call tones; whereunto there may be a harmony; which sounds are ever equal; as singing, the sounds of stringed and wind instruments, the ringing of bells &c.; or immusical sounds, which are ever unequal; such as are the voice in speaking, all whisperings, all voices of beasts and birds, except they be singing-birds, all percussions of stones, wood, parchment, skins, as in drums, and infinite others.

102. The sounds that produce tones are ever from such bodies as are in their parts and pores equal; as well as the sounds themselves are equal; and such are the percussions of metal, as in bells; of glass, as in the filliping of a drinking glass; of air, as in men’s voices whilst they sing, in pipes, whistles, organs, stringed instruments, &c.; and of water, as in the nightingale pipes of regals, or organs, and other hydraulics; which the ancients had, and Nero did so much esteem, but are now lost. And if any man think, that the string of the bow and the string of the viol are neither of them equal bodies, and yet produce tones, he is in error. For the sound is not created between the bow or “plectrum” and the string; but between the string and the air; no more than it is between the finger or quill, and the string in other instruments. So there are, in effect, but three percussions that create tones: percussions of metals, comprehending glass and the like, percussions of air, and percussions of water.

103. The diapason or eighth in music is the sweetest concord, insomuch as it is in effect a unison; as we see in lutes that are strung in the bass strings with two strings, one an eighth above another; which make but as one sound; And every eighth note in ascent, as from eight to fifteen, from fifteen to twenty-two, and so in “infinitum,” are but scales of diapason. The cause is dark, and has not been rendered by any; and therefore would be better contemplated. It seems that air, which is the subject of sounds, in sounds that are not tones, which are all unequal, as has been said, admits of much variety; as we see in the voices of living creatures, and likewise in the voices of several men, by their voices, and in the conjugation of letters, whence articulate sounds proceed; which of all others are most various. But in the sounds which we call tones, that are ever equal, the air is

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