In 18th-century Britain an important debate took place that focused on the fundamentals of musical communication. The central issue can be summarized as follows: what makes sound eloquent?
The principle of imitation, which had regained prominence following the re-reading of Aristotle's Poetics, did not seem to provide a satfactory answer, because in a strict sense it could not be extensively applied to music. More specifically, it proved difficult to invoke the sole principle of imitation to explain the effect of instrumental music (which was becoming more and more common in large cities) on the human soul. Numerous attempts were made to elaborate new theories to explain the effect of music on human beings.The two main categories advanced by persons of letters and philosophers were "expression" and "sympathy".
The present study by Maria Semi (maria.semi@fastwebnet.it) illuminates the specificities of the debate on the art of music that took place in Britain, where the discussion on the communication principle of the art of sound entered in a fruitful synergy with contemporaneous investigations on how the human mind operates. The study of the brain and of the principles of the eloquence of sound intersect with and enrich each other, inspiring (as in the case of Adam Smith) interesting parallelisms between music and human thought. Semi's volume includes also three relevant texts by James Harris (1744), Sir William Jones (1772), and Thomas Twining (1789).