'Stimmung' ('Attunement') between medicine and music aesthetics (ca. 1740-1850)

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The project deals with the conceptual history of the German term Stimmung (attunement) within the course of the second half of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century. During these decades the meaning of Stimmung transformed from the musical practice of tuning musical instruments into the idea of a neurophysiological attunement of the nerves (Nervenstimmung) and eventually into the metaphorical use in the sense of mood (Gemütsstimmung). The project aims to historically consolidate and to conceptually sharpen today’s emotional-atmospheric and metaphorical use of the term Stimmung. In the last decade, Stimmung has been within the research focus of philosophy, literary studies and art history. Within musicology, however, the scholarly examination of concepts of Stimmung has been very sluggish. This is all the more astonishing as today’s Stimmung is semantically and historically so closely linked to the musical phenomenon of instrument tuning. In this sense, the project aims to retrace the conceptual history of Stimmung to ca. 1740 and show the importance of music within this history. Thereby the underlying hypothesis assumes that today’s meaning of Stimmung – that includes mucial practice as well as subjective emotional states, intersubjective, social togetherness and also aesthetical and atmospheric experiences – is fundamentally based on transfer and transformation of knowledge between physiology and music aesthetics within the second half of the 18th century and the concept of a physiological attunement of the nerves (Nervenstimmung) that these interdisciplinary discourses focussed on.Using carefully chosen medical and asthetical sources from the decades between 1740 and 1850 the project aims to trace the different concepts of Stimmung in the progressing 18th century and their transformations in the early 19th century. It aims to show how the two disciplines medicine and aesthetics in a mutual discourse transformed and thereby newly created meanings of Stimmung. German sources will be flanked by English sources to investigate the way these transformations were dependent from a specific language. The project’s aim is (1) to develop a historical founded approach to the concept of emotional-atmospheric Stimmung for musicology and to support methodically and conceptually future studies on the close connection between music and Stimmung as well as related concepts like resonance and atmosphere; and (2) to underline the role of musicology for interdisciplinary research on Stimmung, to increase the mutual capabilities for cooperation and thereby to push forward the discourse.The project is planned to be conducted within the scope of the SNF Research Project Stimmung und Polyphonie: Musikalische Paradigmen in Literatur und Kultur at the Department of Cultural and Science Studies, University of Luzern.