READING
THE OCULAR HARPSICHORD OF LOUIS-BERTRAND CASTEL. The Science and Aesthetics
of an Eighteenth-Century Cause Célèbre.
Maarten Franssen
Tractrix. Yearbook for the History of Science, Medicine, Technology and Mathematics
3, 1991.
Martin Franssen is Associate Professor,
Philosophy Section, Delft University of Technology.
I found his study via googling for historical information on synaesthesia and ocualr instruments. Rather than attemting to sum up this fascinating publication myself, I think the introduction is an adequate indication as to its contents:
Some inventions need never leave the drawing board and materialize in order to leave their marks on the cultural environment. The ocular harpsichord of Louis Bertrand Castel (1688-1757), designed to produce a music of colours, certainly seems to have been such an invention. But although a number of studies have been dedicated to the instrument, it has never been undertaken to systematically trace the extent of its impact on contemporary thought and to follow its appreciation in the world of science and as part of the gradual evolution of eighteenth-century aesthetics towards early Romanticism. The instrument has mostly been treated as the isolated invention of a crank. Only very rarely has it been recognized that, during the greater part of the eighteenth century following its announcement, the idea occupied the minds of many more people than just its inventor. An early and not very well known example is the work of the historian of literature Von Erhardt-Siebold, whose extensive study of the sudden emergence of synaesthetic imagery in early Romantic English poetry led her to surmise a wide diffusion of Castel’s ideas on colour harmony. Although she had not read any of Castel’s own writings, she stated: "I see the ocular harpsichord as the direct stimulus of the use of synaesthetic imagery in literature." Such a hypothesis is, of course, extremely difficult to prove. What I intend to do in this study is rather to chart the responses to the ocular harpsichord throughout the eighteenthth century, and thereby discover what support there is for another conjectural assertion of Von Erhardt-Siebold, that "the ocular harpsichord counted as an invention that one had to come to terms with, and even while it was mostly rejected, even by the Romantics, as a practical instrument, there was wide recognition of the basic ideas behind it". First, however, it is important to consider how scientific and aesthetic arguments intermingled in Castel’s own defense of his instrument and, even, whether there ever was an ocular harpsichord.
REFERENCE LINK
You can download the study from Martin's website:
http://www.tbm.tudelft.nl/webstaf/maartenf/