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Matthias
Rieger (*1965)
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My
research focuses on the history of perception,
especially the sense of proportion, and the social
and cultural consequences of its demise during
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The history
of the sense of proportion serves me as a lens
through which I can study a fundamental rupture
in the way people heard and the way they thought
about what they heard.
From
the time of Pythagoras to the time of Bach, music
was understood as the audible manifestation of
harmony, which in turn was based on proportions.
A musical consonance was defined as a harmonious
relation of two tones based on the proportion
between them. For example, a single string divided
by a ratio of 2:1 produced a difference of an
octave. A proportion of 3:2 sounded a fifth. A
tone did not exist by itself but could only be
thought of in relation to another. This understanding
also extended to the relation between a hearer
and something heard. The sense of hearing and
its object were understood as proportionate. Then,
during the eighteenth century, the Pythagorean
paradigm of a harmonious world, defined by the
proportionate relationship of its parts, became
questionable. The sense of proportion lost its
universal validity, and its status as common sense.
With
the rise of modern acoustics
in the nineteenth century
proportionality was
replaced by a new paradigm:
objective scientific
research using technical
instruments and standardized
measurements. In the
laboratory, the tone
became an acoustical
object, and the ear
a registering device
of questionable reliability.
And this shift from
musical consonance to
isolated tonal values
was one facet of a general
loss of the ability
to sense the proper
proportions between
things.
Intellectual
Biography and musical
training
Born
as the son of a musician,
I grew into a world
steeped in daily musical
practice. My parents
started my musical education
when I was four and,
after the age of eleven,
fascinated by the sound
of kettle drums and
the marimba, I began
training as a percussionist.
Between 1986 and 1993,
I studied Musicology,
German Literature and
Art History at the University
of Bremen, where I graduated
with a thesis on Alban
Berg's opera "Lulu."
From 1993 until his
death in 2002, I attended
the lectures of the
historian and philosopher
Ivan Illich at the University
of Bremen.
Illich
introduced me to an international group of researchers
with different disciplinary affiliations. This
group met regularly in Mexico, Italy, USA and
Germany. Over these years, we studied the history
of proportionality as it applied to music, architecture,
medicine and spatial orientation. We started with
the assumption that proportionality in music theory
or architecture had been used as a purely technical
term within each discipline, but we later began
to study its historical function as an underlying
cosmic principle.
Conversations
with several colleagues in this circle drew my
attention to analogous developments in quite heterogeneous
fields. Barbara Duden pointed out that the scientific
construction of the "tone" in nineteenth-century
musical acoustics was mirrored in her own studies
of the embryo, which became a separable object
by way of a-perspectival drawing methods in anatomy
around 1800. Samar Farage, who studies the Galenic
tradition in Arabic medicine, made me aware that
for a Hakim, "being healthy" means the
harmonious mixture of the four humors. The accountant
Sajay Samuel introduced me to the radical difference
between the modern notion of the separation of
powers and the Aristotelian principle of mixed
government, understood as the proper balance between
diverse kinds of humors in the polis. This collaboration
resulted in a series of lectures that allowed
me to present my studies on the loss of proportionality
in music not only to musicians and musicologists
but also to philosophers, political scientists,
architects, biologists and criminologists.
On
the invitation of Carl Mitcham, then director
of the Science Technology and Society Program
at the Pennsylvania State University, and Ivan
Illich, a guest Professor at PSU, I spent each
fall between 1993 and 1996 at Penn State. This
gave me the opportunity to review the North American
literature on the historical roots and scientific
foundations of modern music. I frequently made
public presentations of my work, as well as discussing
my ideas with colleagues in private seminars.
Mitcham and Illich challenged me to enrich my
theoretical investigations with the practical
knowledge I had gained as a musician. They also
encouraged me to look beyond the horizons of the
history of science and technology and place my
investigation of the perception of music in the
wider context of the history of sense perception
generally.
In
1996, with musicologist Eva Rieger and historian
Barbara Duden as my advisors, I started my PhD
on the "Lehre von den Tonempfindungen"
(1863) of Hermann von Helmholtz, the most influential
study of musical acoustics in the nineteenth century.
This treatise not only attracted the interest
of acousticians, but also of musicians, composers
and inventors such as Edison (phonograph) and
Bell (telephone). In the "Tonempfindungen"
Helmholtz rebuilt the foundations of both musicology
and the practice of music. He was driven by his
desire to found both the making and the appreciation
of music on the objective results of scientific
experiments. In my thesis I investigated Helmholtz's
laboratory experiments in order to show how he
persuaded his readers that their ear for music
was no different than the phonautograph in his
lab and that musical instruments were no more
than sound producing devices identical to his
synthesizing machine.
In
the history of science the turn to the production
of "objective" facts has been well analyzed,
but so far the loss of proportion as the flip
side of this process has been mostly overlooked.
Because proportionality was a key concept in music
and its demise caused lively disputes among scholars
and musicians, music is a privileged site from
which to begin a reinterpretation of the history
of objectivity. As I show in my thesis, Helmholtz's
scientific examination of musical proportions
illuminates how the emergence of objectivity was
grounded in the loss of proportionality. Study
of the reception of the "Tonempfindungen"
also reveals how new scientific constructs like
the objective tone and the isolated ear were absorbed
by musicologists and then historians of science
and eventually came to permeate everyday experience.
By
now, more than a hundred years of sound production
by phonographs, telephones and CD players have
adjusted our ears to the registration of sound
waves and made it nearly impossible to grasp how
people practiced and perceived music before Helmholtz.
Examination of "objectivity" in the
light of the loss of the sensual ability to grasp
proportions distances the researcher from his
own cultural certainties and opens up a new heuristic
access to the thinking, perceptions and experiences
of our ancestors.
In
January 2002 I defended
my thesis on Helmholtz's
"Lehre von den
Tonempfindungen"
at the University of
Bremen and was awarded
my degree summa cum
laude. Presently I am
revising the thesis
for publication at the
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
Darmstadt (Helmholtz
musicus. Eine Studie
zur Objektivierung der
Grundlagen der Musik
im 19. Jahrhundert).
Further research
project
There is a large amount
of secondary literature
treating proportion
as a concept within
specific disciplines.
There is also a vast
literature on the meaning
and demise of proportionality
in the history of music
theory. Historians of
architecture and mathematics
have edited primary
sources and produced
commentaries on them.
In the history of philosophy
proportionality has
been examined as an
ethical and an aesthetical
concept, which provides
the foundation for our
sense of what is beautiful
and therefore good.
But nowhere have these
different studies been
brought together in
a way that would highlight
proportionality as a
cosmological axiom,
a way of being in the
world.
In
order to prepare this
new field of research
I would like to put
together an annotated
bibliography on proportionality,
including primary sources
as well as secondary
literature from antiquity
to today. Despite the
abundance of primary
literature, proportion
is still a blind spot
in areas such as the
history of sense perception,
economics and politics.
On the basis of this
collection I intend
to show that the sense
for proportions not
only guided the learned
reflections of scholars
but also tuned the senses
and shaped the practice
of musicians, physicians,
market women, astrologers
and politicians. A major
article on the fundamental
relevance of proportionality
as a basic principle
in Western history will
summarize this work
and set the frame for
further research.
Organization
activities
In 2000, I organized
and conducted an international
lecture series at the
University of Bremen
on the historicity of
"decision-making."
The talks of various
guest speakers focused
on the way in which
the services of professional
counselors have transformed
citizens into self-managers.
In
September 2000 and May 2001, together with Ivan
Illich, Silja Samerski, Samar Farage and Sajay
Samuel, I organized and conducted "The Oakland
Table" on the invitation of the Mayor of
Oakland, Jerry Brown. This involved six weeks
of lectures and meetings with scholars from various
countries discussing topics such as the "History
of city planning" and "The loss of hospitality."
On both occasions, I gave public lectures and
workshops.
Since
the summer 2003, I have taught courses at the
University of Hannover in the field of the history
of media/communication and history of science.
I
counterbalance my intellectual endeavors in the
history of music and auditory perception by working
as a professional percussionist in classical,
jazz and belly dance music.
Kontakt
pudel@uni-bremen.de
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