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. I use an “entangled organology” that traces economic, technological, scientific, and environmental convergences to reveal the thick networks through which harpsichords traveled and the behavioral codes and motivations that instrument makers, performers, listeners, composers, and philosophers embedded into them. I follow the 1687 French embassy to Siam to show how harpsichords were crucial in intercultural, diplomatic exchanges as gifts, bribes, or as sources of teachable knowledge. I examine Jacques de Vaucanson’s 1738 flute-playing android to show how musical instruments mobilized debates in human anatomy and the mechanical arts. I then focus on bird and monkey genre paintings (singerie) on harpsichords’ surfaces to show how harpsichords evoked the contested human-animal divide. Next, I use Jean-Philippe Rameau’s harpsichord manual of 1724 and songbird pièce to narrate musical confrontations with nature between player and machine. Finally, I bring together early modern brain and nerve theories and an analysis of a pair of keyboard rondeaux by Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer to demonstrate how harpsichord music embraced neurocultural findings on the exceptionalism of human cognition over animals and machines. Drawing from historically informed performance practices, the history of the book, the history of science and technology, art history, and material culture, “Wond’rous Machines” questions implicit assumptions about music, music making, and the fixity of musical instruments to argue that there are kinds of musical engagements, or musicking, that conventional organologies cannot explain. iii The dissertation of Patrick David-Jung Bonczyk is approved. Raymond L. Knapp Elizabeth Randell Upton Mary Terrall Mitchell Bryan Morris, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2021 iv This dissertation is dedicated to Constance G. Arnold, M.D. and to my parents, Dave and Judi Bonczyk. v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1 BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................21 PROLOGUE: “And they touched them for a long time.” .............................................................26 GALLERY FOR PROLOGUE ......................................................................................................38 BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR PROLOGUE ...........................................................................................40 CHAPTER 2: Les Androïds et la Liberté du Mouvement .............................................................42 BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER 2 ...........................................................................................92 CHAPTER 3: Keyboard Play as Affection ....................................................................................98 GALLERY FOR CHAPTER 3 ....................................................................................................146 BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER 3 .........................................................................................162 CHAPTER 4: Je vibre, donc je suis .............................................................................................169 BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER 4 .........................................................................................205 vi LIST OF FIGURES AND PLATES PROLOGUE Figure 1. Map of Ayutthaya by Jean de Courtaulin de Maguellon, 1686 ......................................38 Figure 2. The Royal Kingdom of Siam in 1686. Pierre Du-Val, “Carte du royaume de Siam et des pays circonvoisins” ....................................................................................39 CHAPTER 2 Figure 1. “The Flutist, the Piper, and the Duck” from Vaucanson, Mécanisme du fluteur automate, 1738 ...................................................................................................................47 Figure 2. Advertisement on the occasion of the presentation of Vaucanson’s automata, 1749-1750 ..........................................................................................................................48 Figure 3. Krüger’s render of Castel’s ocular harpsichord in “De novo musices quo oculi delectantur, genere.” 1743 .................................................................................................81 CHAPTER 3 Figure 1. Engraving of a linnet accompanying the English translation (1793) of Buffon’s Histoire, Vol. 4 ................................................................................................................113 Figure 2. Arranging layers in a canary cage. (n.p.). Hervieux, A New Treatise of Canary Birds 1718 English translation ..................................................................................................119 Figure 3. Table of Ornaments from Rameau’s Méchanique des Doigts, 1724 ............................131 Plate 1. “Le Canard Sauvage,” François-Nicolas Martinet, Histoire des oiseaux peints dans tous leurs aspects apparents et sensibles ................................................................................146 vii Plate 2. “Le Canard Sauvage, Femelle,” Martinet .......................................................................147 Plate 3. “Le Grand et Le Petit Martinet,” Martinet ......................................................................148 Plate 4. “La Perdix de Mer,” Martinet .........................................................................................149 Plate 5. “Le Rossingol” (The Nightingale), Martinet ..................................................................150 Plate 6. “La Mouette, mâle,” Martinet .........................................................................................151 Plate 7. “La Jaseur,” Martinet ......................................................................................................152 Plate 8. “Le Coucou,” Martinet ....................................................................................................153 Plate 9. Christophe Huet’s singerie on F.-É. Blanchet Harpsichord, 1773 .................................154 Plate 10. Huet singerie in a monkey music ensemble on harpsichord outer lid painting ............155 Plates 11, 12, 13. Huet’s singeries on harpsichord side panels ....................................................155 Plate 14. Huet’s singerie with castanets on harpsichord side panels ...........................................156 Plate 15. Huet’s birds arabesque on the Blanchet harpsichord’s side panels ..............................157 Plate 16. Blanchet soundboard painting, 1730 .............................................................................158 Plate 17. Soundboard painting on Henri Hemsch harpsichord, ca. 1736 ....................................159 Plates 18, 19. Henri Hemsch soundboard painting, 1754 ............................................................160 Plate 20. Pascal Taskin soundboard, 1769 ...................................................................................161 Plate 21. Rose painting with adjacent bird on Pascal Taskin soundboard, 1769 .........................161 CHAPTER 4 Figure 1. Frontispiece of Giovanni Girolami Kapsperger’s Libro Primo D’Intavolatura di Chitarone, 1604 ...........................................................................................................179 Figure 2. Pancrace Royer’s first, and only, book of harpsichord pièces, 1746 ...........................191 viii LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES CHAPTER 2 Example 1. Rameau’s “Les