UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title “Wond’rous Machines”: How Eighteenth-Century Harpsichords Managed the Human-Animal, Human-Machine Boundaries Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2c83x38q Author Bonczyk, Patrick David-Jung Publication Date 2021 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles “Wond’rous Machines”: How Eighteenth-Century Harpsichords Managed the Human-Animal, Human-Machine Boundaries A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Musicology by Patrick David-Jung Bonczyk 2021 © Copyright by Patrick David-Jung Bonczyk 2021 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION “Wond’rous Machines”: How Eighteenth-Century Harpsichords Managed the Human-Animal, Human-Machine Boundaries by Patrick David-Jung Bonczyk Doctor of Philosophy in Musicology University of California, Los Angeles, 2021 Professor Mitchell Bryan Morris, Chair The tenuous boundaries that separate humans, animals, and machines fascinate and sometimes unsettle us. In eighteenth-century France, conceptions of what differentiates humans from animals and machines became a sustained topic of interest in spaces that were public and private, recreational and intellectual. This dissertation argues that eighteenth-century harpsichords were porous sites where performers, composers, artisans, academics, and pedagogues negotiated the limits of these fragile boundaries. French harpsichords are at the center of my dissertation because they embodied an experimental collision of animal parts and other biomatter, complex machinery, and visual and musical performance. Taken together, I consider the ways that instruments had social import apart from sound production alone, expanding the definition of ii “instrument” beyond traditional organological studies of style in craftsmanship and musical aesthetics.
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