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Description

Music - Acoustic. KIRCHER. Phonurgia nova.

Folio. 324x205 mm. Contemporary full brown leather binding, ribbed back with title and gold decorations, gold decoration on the edge of the covers, red edges, endpapers in comb-marbled paper. Pages, 46 unnumbered, including Half-title, Engraved Frontispiece, Titlepage, Full-page engraved portrait, 229, 1 blank, [16], two plates engraved out of text. Signature: π⁴ a-c⁴ d² (-d2) (*) ⁴ 3 (*) ² A-2H⁴. The last leaf blank. Italic, Round, Greek and Gothic Type, Initials and woodcut friezes. Lots of illustrations in the text engraved in woodcut. Vignette on the Title page with a view, Allegorical Frontispiece designed by Felix Cavrier and Portrait of Leopold I drawn by Franz Herman, both engraved by Georg Andreas Wolfgang, 17 engravings in the text, 2 plates out of text on pages 114 and 136, all engraved in copper.Slight signs of wear on the binding, traces of humidity on the Aa2 paper, overall a good copy. First edition of Kircher's exceptional work on acoustics and music. The is the first European book devoted entirely to acoustics, which treats at length of the echo, laws of acoustics, and of instruments. It presents a remarkable compilation of knowledge, gathered from many contemporary experiments in acoustics and the advances in the construction of musical instruments. The title of the work is the neologism Phonurgia, which means "new way of producing sound." The work was, in part, Kircher's response to Sir Samuel Morland (1625-1695), a fellow of the Royal Society of London, who claimed to have invented the megaphone. Numerous testimonies from Kircher's admirers are appended to the work defending Kircher's claim as the inventor of the tuba stentorophonica, as Morland called it. As he did in the Musurgia, Kircher here describes and illustrates many bizarre and curious inventions like talking statues, an Aeolian tuba and lyre, eavesdropping devices, and hordes of odd-shaped trumpets.

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Music - Acoustic. KIRCHER. Phonurgia nova.

Estimate 4 000 - 5 000 EUR
Starting price 3 500 EUR

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For sale on Tuesday 16 Jul : 15:00 (CEST)
padova, Italy
Bado e Mart Auctions
+390498755317
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