2 - Origins

Summary

Relying heavily on the book of Genesis and on biblical hermeneutics, seventeenth-century theorists sought to recapture or re-create the transparence of knowledge to expression that characterized the biblical origin. In An Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (1668), John Wilkens asserts that language was the work of divine flat: “And 'tis evident enough that the first Language was con-created with our first Parents, they immediately understanding the voice of God speaking to them in the Garden”. Just as Adam and Eve were given language by God, they also must have received music in the same way; this is the supposition that introduces Jean Rousseau's 1687 treatise on the viol: “if we begin with our first Father after his creation, we will find that having been given the most admirable understanding of the mind & the most perfect physical dexterity, he possessed all the Sciences & all the Arts in their perfection, & consequently music as well”. The voice of God, music, language, and understanding are conflated, all immediately present to Adam in the Garden. Whether directly infused into Adam (“con-created”) or invented by him, music is described as an emanation or a direct result of being: “one can answer that Adam sung the praises of God, & consequently that he invented Music, or that he received it through divine inspiration, like the other forms of knowledge, seeing that there seems to be no other possibility: one can reasonably say the same thing of our Savior”.