MUSIC/SOUND YEARS: 0980-1889

Sound is the name we give to certain frequencies of fluctuating pressure waves which resonate the human eardrum and are able to be perceived by the human brain. Waves fitting this description have existed since the big bang, all of them dissipating forever into space without any decipherable trace.

The earliest recorded sound were on paper in the year 0980, Scolica enchiriadis, was widely circulated in medieval manuscripts.

In 1650, Athanasius Kircher was showing how to play microtonal music on the organ. The Musurgia Universalis (1650) sets out Kircher's views on music: he believed that the harmony of music reflected the proportions of the universe. The book includes plans for constructing water-powered automatic organs, notations of birdsong and diagrams of musical instruments. One illustration shows the differences between the ears of humans and other animals. In Phonurgia Nova (1673) Kircher considered the possibilities of transmitting music to remote places.

Other machines designed by Kircher include an aeolian harp, automatons such as a statue which spoke and listened via a speaking tube, a perpetual motion machine, and a Katzenklavier ("cat piano"). The Katzenklavier would have driven spikes into the tails of cats, which would yowl to specified pitches, although Kircher is not known to have constructed the instrument.

In Phonurgia Nova, literally "new methods of sound production", Kircher examined acoustic phenomena. He explored the use of horns and cones in amplifying sound for architectural applications. He also examined echoes in rooms using domes of different shapes, including the muffling effect of an elliptical dome from Heidelberg. In one section he explored the therapeutic effects of music in tarantism, a theme from southern Italy.

Combinatorics

Although Kircher's work was not mathematically based, he did develop systems for generating and counting all combinations of a finite collection of objects (i.e., a finite set), based on the previous work of Ramon Llull. His methods and diagrams are discussed in Ars Magna Sciendi, sive Combinatoria, 1669. They include what may be the first recorded drawings of complete bipartite graphs, extending a similar technique used by Llull to visualize complete graphs. Kircher also employed combinatorics in his Arca Musarithmica, an aleatoric music device capable of composing millions of church hymns by combining randomly selected musical phrases.

More published paper recordings from Francis North in 1677, Leonhard Euler in 1739, and Thomas Young in 1806.

The first original Telegraph Message in 1844.

Edouard Leon Scott's paper recordings from 1853 to 1860.

Alexander Graham Bell paper recording in 1875.

Thomas Edison and recordings on cylinders in 1877.

Tchaikovsky music in 1877.

Erik Satie music in 1884.

Gramaphone discs and Shellac discs (78's) created in around 1889.