v5i1 final:echoes fall 04 final - acoustics today

8 Acoustics Today, January 2009

v5i1 final:ECHOES fall 04 final 2/27/09 4:53 PM Page 8

Athanasius Kircher

Athanasius Kircher(Geisa, Germany; 2May 1602– Rome, Italy;

27 November 1680) became aJesuit in 1628 in Mainz,Germany (Fig. 1). He taught inWürzburg, Germany in 1629and in Avignon, France in1631. Afterwards, in 1633, hewas invited to Vienna, Austriato take up Kepler’s former postas Mathematician at the Courtof Ferdinand II. However, dur-ing his journey acrossNorthern Italy, Pope UrbanoVIII (Barberini) called Kircherto Rome, where he moved andis known to have taughtMathematics and Hebrew at the Collegium Romanum (Fig.2). After eight years, he was released from teaching, and he

focused exclusively on study-ing hieroglyphs. At this timehe began to collect manyitems from all over the world,and in 1651 founded hisKircherian Museum.

At his time he was consid-ered a homo universalis, sincehe studied many different top-ics starting from a single pointof view. He studied geology(volcanoes), medicine (heunderstood that plague iscaused by germs and he wasthe first to use the micro-scope), history (he invented atheory for translating theEgyptian hieroglyphs usingCoptic manuscripts) anthro-

pology, astronomy, mathematics, magnetism, optics, mineral-ogy, exploration, archaeology and many other various topics.

Kircher’s Phonurgia nova 9

ATHANASIUS KIRCHER’S PHONURGIA NOVA:THE MARVELOUS WORLD OF SOUND DURING THE 17TH CENTURY

Lamberto TronchinDipartimento di Ingegneria Energetica, Nucleare e del Controllo Ambientale (DIENCA)-Centro Interuniversitario di Acustica e di

Ricerca Musicale (CIARM) University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

“Kircher’s Phonurgia expresses a wish to

enrich and widen the knowledge already

existing in the field of architectural and

musical acoustics. Written in Latin, the

Phonurgia is an original mixture of Baroque

aesthetics and sonic enquiry that could be

called in Italian “meraviglia” or in English,

“wonder,” and yet only a few studies of this

fascinating work exist.”

Fig. 1. Athanasius Kircher in 1664, at the age of 62.

Fig. 2. The Roman College in the 17th Century.

As a typical Baroque academic, Kircher used astrologyand trusted the existence of griffins and sirens while at thesame time debating against the followers of ChristianRosenkreutz (1378–1484), the Rosicrucians. Kircher’s intel-lectual contemporaries such as Boyle and Newton likewisetrusted in alchemy, but whereas these names are celebrated inthe history of science, Athanasius Kircher’s name is not. Hisworks were considered too much a patchwork of both fantas-tical and scientific worlds, and despite writing to more than760 people, including two Emperors of the Holy RomanEmpire and scientists such as Leibniz, Torricelli, and Gassendi.Kircher, doctor centium atrium, was completely ignored in



the Dictionnaire historique et critique of Pierre Bayle(1647–1706) and the Encyclopédie of Diderot and D’Alembertand in all the other encyclopedic works written during theEnlightenment.

Kircher’s Phonurgia novaThe literary production of Athanasius Kircher is vast,

spanning almost every branch of knowledge, including thetheory of music. The title of the literary work analyzed in thisarticle contains the neologism, Phonurgia,1 a compound ofthe Greek words φovή (sound) and ỏpγή (work, energy). TheLatin word nova (the entire book was written in Latin) isadded, and the title translates as New Modality of SoundProduction. In the Explicatio terminorum (explanatorywords) on the last page of the Phonurgia nova, Kircher him-self defines “Phonurgia as Facultas mirabilium per sonos oper-atrix,” meaning “capability to provoke the marvelous bymeans of sounds.”

This treatise was written during the dispute with thecontemporary English engineer Samuel Morland,2 whoclaimed responsibility for the invention of the tuba stentoro-phonica, a “trumpet with a strong sound.” This musicalinstrument aroused great interest among many contempo-rary scientists, due to its incredible sound emission potential.Kircher declared that he was the first to have invented it andprovided the evidence for this claim in his Musurgia

Universalis,3 written twenty years previously. In this work hehad already described the “tuba.” Besides, the polemicalintention of Kircher’s Phonurgia nova expresses a wish toenrich and widen already existing knowledge in the field ofroom and musical acoustics. The Phonurgia nova is an origi-nal mixture of Baroque aesthetics and sonic enquiry thatcould be called in Italian, “meraviglia,” or in English, “won-der,” and yet only a few studies of this fascinating work exist.

After an initial humanistic subordination to classicalsources, in the last decades of the 16th Century the growingscientific revolution imposed a radical turning point: therediscovery of the conic section and the study of the burningglasses of Archimedes, the study of sound propagationadvanced from a wave approach to that of ray-tracing, asrelated to light.

The Venetian Ettore Ausonio began the geometricapproach to acoustics, soon followed by Giovanni BattistaDella Porta (who wrote the Magia naturalis, Napoli, 1589)and by Giuseppe Biancani (author of a Sphaera mundi,Bologna, 1635), focusing on sound and modifying the musi-cal scale. The first mathematic development along such lineswas due to Bonaventura Cavalieri (De speculo ustorio,Bologna, 1632), who was the first to affirm that “…for thesound (instead of to rays of light) during the design, it is nec-essary to take into account a phenomenon called, in the opti-cal field, diffraction.”

The study of the musical world, based on exact laws ofphysics, interested a large section of eighteenth-century sci-ence and culture. Kircher, for his part, revealed a logical,rational approach towards any occurrence of musical phe-nomenon.

In chapter one of the first book of Phonurgia nova,Kircher tackles the problem of the nature of sound. It isdefined as a sensitive phenomenon that is perceived by hear-ing. It is a movement of bodies that are in contact with eachother by means of a portion of air interposed among them.For the Jesuit, therefore, the movement of bodies was thefundamental presupposition of every acoustic manifestation.

Kircher’s definition of sound is based on Aristotle andBoethius. Aristotle defined sound as “a determined move-ment from two bodies that crash one against the other”(Musurgia Universalis); Boethius, similarly, believed that thesound was a movement that broke the air up and afterwardsreached the ear.

For Kircher, however, sound was not simply a physicalphenomenon, as it was for the two aforementioned authors,but also something that was deeply connected with humannature. Kircher’s conception of sound was not yet influencedby the modern theory of oscillations, which was formulatedlater thanks to the researches of Galilei and Newton, but italready considered the deep relationship between the num-ber of the oscillations (frequency) and the pitch of the sound.

The Phonurgia nova is subdivided in two books. ThePhonosophia nova is the more anthropological: in whichKircher analysed the influences of music on the humanmind, inclined towards various types of “affections.” He alsodeveloped the concept that the art of sound making can beused effectively for therapeutic purposes. A remarkableexample of this is the “tarantolati,” people who were bitten by

Fig. 3. The Kircherian Museum.

<#> Acoustics Today, July 2008



the tarantula (Fig. 4), a poisonous spider native to the ApuliaRegion in Italy (Aranea Apula…arachneum animal nocentis-simum) that during 17th Century was considered very dan-gerous. The “tarantolati” (Fig. 5) were considered to beinsane because they danced continuously without stopping,and looked like people dancing on a fire, jumping continu-ously, nervously. They could apparently be healed, thanks tothe performance of a particular type of melody and rhythm(antidotum tarantulae).

In the Phonosophia anacamptica, Kircher was extensive-ly interested in the prodigious phenomenon of echo. He con-sidered echoes to be founded on sound waves that producedreverberation after hitting “obiecta phonocamptica,” or“obstacles,” propagated in air or water. In the same book hedeals with sound propagation in tubes of various shapes andtypologies, of sound strengthened in natural caves re-emerg-ing at the surface with increased force, of how to listen toother people’s conversations with the aid of tubes and hiddendevices while remaining in a concealed room, and how toexchange coded messages by the use of special trumpets.

Finally, Kircher accurately described cars and contrap-tions that he had himself often invented in order to astonishand amaze people: speaking statues, channels in which soundsand noises were spread, and musical instruments with internalmechanisms that generated unexpected harmonies, playing bythemselves depending on the direction of the wind.

The mechanics of the magnificentKircher’s works express the typical Baroque vision of the

“marvellous world.” All the machines that he invented revealthe strong alliance between science and magic. He wished toamaze, to convince people of improbable things and, finally,to explain the arcane that lies between hermeticism and exactscience. From the point of view of the traditional history ofscience, the inventions of this German Jesuit remained aprovocative source of perplexity. Such inventions could hard-ly be included into “experimental science.” Nevertheless, atthat time, the Kircherian Museum (see Fig. 3) was renownedfor its great splendour. The Kircherian inventions and otheritems collected in his museum reveal his audience to bespecifically selected. The marvellous exhibits that he con-served and displayed belonged to a large variety of branchesof learning, from mechanics to metallurgy, distillation to cos-metics, and magnetism to aerology.

Sound entertainment for the aristocracyThe talking statue. Kircher’s talking statue caused a

great amount of discussion: some people, following the prin-ciples of the occult sciences, believed the statue could havebeen constructed. They declared that Alberto Magnus built aman’s head that could perfectly pronounce articulate sounds.Moreover, Kircher declared that he had already fully demon-strated in his work, Oedipus Aegyptiacus, that the Egyptianshad built some statues that were able to speak. Nevertheless,many people asserted this idea was in contrast with naturallaws, and they argued that such a device had never been con-structed. They declared that the machines of Alberto Magnusand the Egyptians were either fake or built with the help ofevil spirits and divinities that gave responses through speak-ing oracles and statues. Others considered it feasible that astatue could be built with the capacity to pronounce somearticulated sounds: following the examples in nature, itwould be possible for the wind to animate a mechanical lar-ynx, tongue, and other phonetic organs capable of producingthe clear effect of an articulate voice.

However, Kircher did not wish to enter the argumentover the famous head of Alberto Magnus or ancient Egyptiandevices, because he thought they were impossible in them-selves. Therefore he provided an alternative constructionmethod for a similar statue, able not only to pronounce artic-ulate sounds, but even to sing, reply to any solicitations, andto reproduce animal cries.

The text of Phonurgia nova relevant to Fig. 6 says:“Inside a room ABCD, where a spiral-shaped tube(cocleato) was put and moved in E or in the vertical con-duit S, lies a statue having moving mouth and eyes andhaving breathing life through the entire mass of the body.This statue must be located in a given place, in order toallow the end section of the spiral-shaped tube to pre-cisely correspond to the opening of the mouth. In thismanner it will be perfect, and capable of clearly emittingany kind of sound: in fact the statue will be able to speakcontinuously, uttering in either a human or animal voice:it will laugh or sneer; it will seem to really cry or moan;sometimes with great astonishment it will strongly blow. Ifthe opening of the spiral-shaped tube is located in corre-spondence to an open public space, all human words pro-nounced, focused in the conduit, would be replayed

Fig. 4. The tarantula (Lycosa tarentula). Fig. 5. The “tarantolati.”



through the mouth of the statue: if it is a dog’s bark, thestatue will bark, if someone sings, the statue will answerwith singing and so on. If the wind blows, this will be takeninto the spiral-shaped tube and the statue will be forced toemit very strong breaths. Applying the breath to a pipe, itwill play. Bringing a trumpet near to the mouth of the stat-ue, the musical instrument will play and it will make innu-merable fun effects of this kind, provided that the spiral-shaped tube is disposed with the greatest of attention.”

Analyzing Fig. 6, the section of the conduit becomes nar-rower from the outside towards the interior, and therefore theair velocity increases to a considerable degree from left toright, inducing the talking effect in the statue. The acousticmechanism which made the statue talk is substantially amicrophone, which Kircher designed as a huge spiral-shapedtube, having the inner surface perfectly polished to reflect thewaveforms. It was therefore able to convey the sound fromoutside into the room.

In the vertical version, (left side of Fig. 6 and in the backof the square) it seems to recall Borromini’s lantern of St. Ivoto the Sapienza, even if the inspiration for Kircher was in the“Grotta di Dionigi” in Syracuse. Giorgio de Sepi,4 who wrotethe first catalogue of Kircher’s museum, described this talk-ing statue: “Kircher, in the laboratory of his room, has con-structed such a tube that the concierges can call him at theentrance, avoiding to go to his far apartment, but they canstop and call him with a usual voice from the garden.”

Sonorous voyeurism. Kircher devoted an entire chapterof his Phonurgia nova to the description of many gorgeousarchitectonic devices developed for worthy nobles, many ofwhom would have read, or heard, of his work. All these devicesare fully illustrated and provided with extensive technicalinformation about their construction.

The delectationes were specifically developed to amplifythe voice, to communicate at a distance, to send music to dif-

ferent rooms, and even to eavesdrop.Kircher’s first described the inventionregarding the singular location of cer-tain palatial royal chambers, in whichevery spoken or whispered wordcould be heard distinctly, not only inthe same space, but also in otherrooms. Having explained that con-duits suitable for directing sound andinserted into the walls should have atubular or lengthened shape, Kircherindicated how to construct the build-ing (Fig. 7).

Three receivers D, Z, S, haveexactly the same common origin E,corresponding to the window on thefloor above (see the drawing in sec-tion).

“Inside the room, where the tube (D)captured and channelled the conver-sation, (i.e., the “D room”), there wasa low narrow door, which, in case of

necessity, could be hermetically sealed. In addition therewas a window with glass of a crystalline thickness. Thesame characteristics had to be shared by the rooms Z andS. Sound emitted in one of the rooms, not able to exit bythe sealed door nor by the window, was directed towardDE, ZE, SE and conducted through secret conduits,reaching the people on the floor above.”

Following Kircher’s detailed description, such a devicecould be feasibly installed and function in a large building.

The “science of the echo”The first book of the Phonurgia nova is called Phonosophia

anacamptica, i.e., “the science of sound from the perspective ofthe echo.” Performing many experiments, Kircher studied thephenomenon of echo, beginning with its definition given bythe Frenchman Marin Mersenne (1588-1648) in his HarmonieUniverselle. Echo has two different meanings—in the first caseecho is imago vocis—reflected (or repeated) voice. In the sec-ond meaning as expressed in Latin is resonance, from theGreek verb Ηχέω, (resound). This second meaning of echo isintended as the air in the cavities of a body, as within theVitruvian vases, or in sound-chests.

The second section of the Phonosophia anacamptica isentitled Architectura echonica, and describes many experi-ments Kircher conducted with the phenomenon of echo (seeFig. 8). One of the more interesting experiments is regardingthe obiectum phonocampticum, which refers to all the objectswhere the sound or the voice could be reflected, not onlyfrom walls and buildings, but also including trees, rivers, andmetallic surfaces. During the explanation of his Echosophia(the “science of echoes”), Kircher found that air movementcauses sound propagation, and wind propagation can influ-ence echo effects as well as weather conditions. This could beconsidered as one of the most relevant results Kircherachieved in the field of acoustics.

Fig. 6. The talking statues. They would be able to reproduce whispers from the square.


Architectural acoustics. Section IV ofthe first Book of the Phonurgia nova alsoillustrates typologies and modalities ofconstructing buildings together witharchitectural acoustics, and the descrip-tion of particularly interesting places,according to Kircher, from the point ofview of their acoustic potentialities. Someof these places still exist today, and theyhave been famous since antiquity. In thesecases, Kircher tried to comprehend therecondite modality of the production ofparticular sonorous effects or to explaintheir inner architecture. However, thereare a few places he describes in detailwhich are actually pure Kircher inven-tions, intended to give entertainment,delight and provoke the curiosity of thecontemporary wealthy nobility.

Heidelberg’s echo. In Section IV ofthe first Book of the Phonurgia nova,Kircher described the interior structureof the Palace of the Powerful Elector ofHeidelberg that he personally visited.Inside the palace, there was a particularroom characterized by an extraordinaryecho. Within the circumference CGEF(Fig. 9), words spoken in a soft voice at Ccould be perceived by another person atpositions C, G, or F. The same phenome-non is present within the cupola of theBasilica of St. Peter in Rome (the whis-pering gallery). This room in the palaceof Heidelberg possessed a remarkablecapacity to amplify sounds, due especial-ly to its circular shape and the vaultedceiling, which contributed to a surprisingacoustic effect. However, Kircher


Fig. 7. Amplifiers and conductors of sound.

Fig. 8. Experiments with echoes. Fig. 9. Heidelberg’s echo.



analysed in particular the floor of the room, presuming thematerial used could contribute to the special acoustic effect.At that time, pavement in the so-called “Venetian style”became fashionable and extensively used in many palaces.This type of pavement, which still exists in several ancientpalaces, is a mixture of mortar and stones; besides giving apleasant aesthetic effect, once trampled, produces a singularsonorous effect Kircher emphatically compared to a thunder-ing crowd rushing in threatening pursuit.

The elliptical room. Kircher demonstrated his knowledgethat the geometric shape of rooms would influence acousticbehavior. One of his most interesting studies is regarding thecapability of elliptically shaped ceilings to transmit and rein-force the voice better than any other shape. Kircher under-stood that the ellipse, which has two foci, could be used for theconstruction of a room. With an ellipsoidal vault it would bepossible to use these two foci for two people to communicateeasily with each other at a distance (Fig. 10). Kircher’s intuitionand consequent observations were ofcourse correct. In the ellipse everyoutgoing straight line from a focuswill be directed to the other focus.Moreover, the more reflective thesurfaces, the more concentrated arethe sounds. In such a case the prop-erty of restitution of the sound iseffective and surprising. In order tostrengthen his observation, Kircheralso suggested the surfaces of theinner walls of the ellipsoidal vaultshould be cleaned with a mixture ofwater and Arabic rubber to optimisethe acoustic effect.

Villa Simonetta. The descrip-tion of the Villa Simonetta, “justoutside the Door of the Gardeners”in Milan, was of particular interest.Ferdinando Gonzaga, the Governorof the city at that time, built the villaand, as Kircher relates, it becamemore famous for its echoes than forits extraordinary and admirable

architectural symmetry. On the first floor there is a window(Fig. 11) where every word that is uttered projects reinforcedin intensity and echoed four-fold. Moreover, if the words areprojected with a stentorian voice, they are multiplied so manytimes they can be heard almost infinitely. Kircher, havingheard from many people about the singular acoustic phe-nomenon in the villa, decided to discover what caused it, andtherefore satisfy his own curiosity. He declared that P. MatteoStorr, a faithful and erudite clergyman of the Company ofJesus, already observed and diligently annotated the dimen-sions of the building and its architectural details.

The Villa Simonetta complex consists of three partsaround a great courtyard opening at the back towards a luxu-riant garden. The façade is comprised of two porticoes withten columns on each floor. The building has two floors sepa-rated by an ambulatory. On the ground floor, paving stonescomprise the zone indicated by the letter K in Fig. 11. Laterallyand parallel to this are the other two blocks, labeled XMVNand GFHL respectively. After having accurately described themeasurements (height, length and width) of the three zonesdivided into dwellings, Kircher then moved his attention to thewindow where the famous echo is produced.

Some witnesses reported to Kircher that at this locationthe voice was multiplied 24 to 30 times according to itspitch. Kircher identified the cause of this as the proportion-al distance between the two parallel areas of the building,and in their perfect equality and absence of surface rough-ness. Furthermore, he demonstrated this thesis with the aidof a drawing (Fig. 12). Let us consider the walls AC and BD,which correspond to the two parallel zones of the VillaSimonetta; they are placed at a distance where it is possibleto perceive, by means of the echo, words with two-syllables.

With the treatment of echo in the Phonurgia nova,Kircher made a remarkable contribution to feeding the

Fig. 10. The elliptical room. As with Heidelberg’s echo, Kircher studied the effect ofthe ceiling shape.

Fig. 11. V illa Simonetta.

The Vice President’s View <#>



curiosity and interest surrounding the Villa Simonetta, thehistory of which is long and troubled. Some people prefer tocall it evocatively the “Villa of the Echo,” following a populartradition that Kircher helped establish. Today the VillaSimonetta is an important cultural centre that organizes con-certs and courses.

ConclusionsKircher’s complex symbolic universe is most expressly

revealed in his machines. From appearance alone, they seemto be mere simple games, but by creating unexpected con-nections he surprises and invites the enquiring mind to ques-tion and investigate further.

The Phonurgia nova exhibits a rich and consistent play-fulness that works on several levels—the religious, mystical,esoteric and scientific. Every theorem is described with the

rigor of a geometric demonstration—hypothesis, corollary,explanatory images, solutions—but Kircher does not wishsimply to extract data, but focuses on a particular element inorder to formulate a law, transcribed with mathematical andgeometric certainty that a particular phenomenon can beexperimentally repeated.

The illusions induced by Kircherian devices are intendedto provide evidence of the inadequacy of the human mindcompared with the mysteries of Nature. Nevertheless, they dogive us an intriguing vision of 17th century scientific concerns.

AcknowledgmentsThe author expresses his acknowledgment to Galia

Mastromatteo, who contributed considerably to the transla-tion of the Phonurgia nova from the original Latin, to PaoloGozza who gave precious suggestions about Kircher, and toDavid J. Knight, who proofread the English. [Note: This arti-cle was initially published in Proceedings of Meetings onAcoustics 4, 015002 (2008)].AT

References and further reading:1 A. Kircher, “Phonurgia nova sive conjugium mechanico-

physicum artis & naturae paranympha phonosophia concinna-tum” (Kempten, R. Dreherr, 1673).

2 S. Morland, “An account of the speaking trumpet, as it hath beencontrived and published by Sir Samuel Morland, Knight andBaronet,” London, an. 1673.

3 A. Kircher, “Musurgia Universalis, sive ars magna consoni et dis-soni” (2 volumes) (Roma, Francesco Corbelletti, 1650).

4 G. De Sepi, “Musaeum kircherianum,” ex officina Janssonio-Waesbergieriana, Amsterdam, 1678.

5 J. S. Kestler, “Physiologia kircheriana experimentalis,”Amsterdam, 1680.

6 P. Findlen, Athanasius Kircher, The last man who knew every-thing (Routledge, New York, 2004).

7 L. Tronchin and G. Mastromatteo, “Il meraviglioso sonoro nellaPhonurgia Nova (1673) di Athanasius Kircher” (“The fantasticsound world of the Phonurgia Nova”), 34th National Congress ofAIA, Florence, 2007.

Fig. 12. Demonstration of echoes in the Villa Simonetta.

Lamberto Tronchin, AssistantProfessor in EnvironmentalPhysics at the University ofBologna, holds a MastersDegree in Building Engineeringand a PhD in Applied Physics(Architectural Acoustics) fromthe University of Bologna. Hehas completed advanced cours-es on the mechanics of musicalinstruments at CISM, Udine,Italy and on noise and vibration atthe University of Southamptonin the UK where he has also

worked as a visiting researcher. His principal areas ofresearch are musical acoustics and room acoustics. Dr.Tronchin was a visiting researcher at the University of Kobe

in Japan, a visiting professor at the University of Graz inAustria, Special honored International Guest at theInternational Workshop, “Analysis, Synthesis and Perceptionof Music Signals,” at Jadavpur University of Kolkata, India in2005, at La Trobe University in Mildura (Australia) and at theInternational Musical Festival of Ballarat (Australia) in 2009.Dr. Tronchin is a pianist and earned a diploma in piano fromthe Conservatory of Reggio Emilia. He is the author of morethan 140 papers and is Chair of the Musical Acoustics groupof the Italian Association of Acoustics. He is a member of theScientific Committee of the Inter-University Centre ofAcoustics and Musical Research, has chaired sessions onarchitectural and musical acoustics during several interna-tional symposiums, and has been a referee for a number ofinternational journals. He is the Chair of organizing and sci-entific committees of the International Advanced Course onMusical Acoustics.

<#>


v5i1 final:echoes fall 04 final - acoustics today

Documents