Ocular Harpsichord ‘La Toilet’

. Th e color organ with its modern interpretation is an electronic device representing sound in a visual confi guration. Th e origins of the color organ inventions can be traced back to the hand-operated models based on harpsichord design promising the splash of colors upon pressing a key. In this perusal, the harpsichord appears as a tool of fashion with its unique interpretation taking place in a setting where the author got into the habit of calling the ocular harpsichord ‘la toilet’. Th e acquisition of a certain tendency made the author develop a habit of calling ornaments in general as ‘visible music’. Th roughout the narrative incorporating romantic features, the concept of ornament in music manifests itself visibly on clothing and architectural decoration adhering to the philosophical fulcrum between the 18th-century decorative aesthetics and the inventiveness of the Lumières. As a logical consequence, a mathematical structure applied in architecture could turn into keyboard compostition.

has also been an art writer whose little-known texts carry the attribute of a sort of manual about fine arts and their effects in general 4 .
If I were to talk briefly about the outline, the first original French version of the literary work in question appears as an anonymous author's work. In that first version signed by Sir Thomas Witth whom nothing is known about, Gonzaga doesn't appear. His name hadn't been appearing in the first booklet for seven years until it appeared as translator in the 1807 version 5 . Researchers concur that this was actually a trick which Gonzaga was hiding behind because he probably never had the courage to introduce himself as the author. It is claimed that it was conducted a lot of research in order to recover the text of Sir Thomas Witth or other possible authors with a similar name but any satisfactory solution to the riddle has not yet been given 6 .
So far, the original French version of the booklet has been translated alongside the other writings of Gonzaga from French into Italian under the curatorship of Maria Ida Biggi and Cini Foundation and published in 2006 by Leo S. Olschki publishing house 7 . Unlike a bound book there is a monographic study 8 dating back to 1974, overall the Russian translation of his writings. In another study published in 2011, the Russian translation takes part alongside the letters by Gonzaga 9 .
The absence of an English translation of those writings, both individually and collectively, inspired me to undertake it with the intention of making the text more accessible to the public 10 . Being focused on the idea of visualizing music through architectural forms of the 18th century played on an imaginary instrument, has led me to offer my opinion about the 'Thomas Witth' pseudonym which may be reflecting the Aristotelian 4 Pietro di Gottardo Gonzaga introducing the practice of his profession to the Prince Jusupov-the royal theater manager of that period. Cf. P. di Gottardo Gonzaga, Information à mon chef ou éclaircissement couvenable du décorateur-théâtral Pierre Gothard Gonzague sur l'exercice de sa profession, Al. Pluchart, St. Petersburg 1807, p. 4. 5 In the second edition of the book, the phrase «sur le sens commun» appears before us: Id., La musique des yeux et l' thought linked with Empiricism questioning how do our senses interact with our mind-a philosophy of mind enhanced in the British-Scottish intellectual circles 11 of the 18th century.
In the first place, readers encounter alongside the Newtonian optics and the ocular harpsichord of the scientist monk Louis Bertrand Castel, how the author got into the habit of calling that ocular harpsichord the 'toilet'. DISCUSSION Since the invention of the piano that traces back to Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655-1731) from Italy, the piano variants have been divided so far into three types as: grand pianos, upright pianos, and digital pianos, all having their own unique features designed for specific needs and environments. Cristofori, unsatisfied by the lack of control that musicians had over the volume level of the harpsichord, around 1700, was credited for switching out the plucking mechanism with a hammer to create the instrument named 'clavicembalo col piano e forte'.
The Harpsichord is known as an instrument that is the ancestor of the piano but while both instruments are keyboard instruments there are differences that differ them from each other in terms of mechanism, tone-color and playing technique. While the harpsichord pulls the strings with a plectrum, the hammers of the piano strike the strings. Since the hammer hits the string based on the intensity of the keystroke, the piano mechanism can control the sound intensity. In the harpsichord, no such feature exists, and the volume doesn't change regardless of how the key is pressed.
In 1703 the supporting idea that there is in all things a vibratory disposition awakened by the word and by the breath of the spirit in the mode of resonance, color and sound, led French Jesuit Mathematician Louis Bertrand Castel (1688-1757) to set forth an ocular harpsichord displaying sounds in the mode of resonance and color. According to this interpretation, the resonant body should have responded to the universal harmony of the deep and dark unity assigned to the world by the breath of the Spirit. This research of the Jesuit Castel led to the contribution of several scientific works as: Traité de physique sur la pesanteur universelle des corps (1724), Mathématique universelle (1728), L'optique des couleurs (1740) 12 , and in 1743 a critique on 159 The Ocular Harpsichord 'La Toilet' the color spectrum of Newton. Castel initially illustrated his optical theories with a proposal for Clavecin pour les yeux (1725): Castel admitted that the analogy between tones and colours was not perfect. A tone is in practice a fleeting thing, while a colour is something permanent. Moreover, in a musical piece the different tones merge into one whole, while in a painting the different colours stay clearly separated […] Castel proposed to take an ordinary harpsichord, but to change the mechanism so that the pressing of the keys would bring out the colours with their combinations and their chords; in one word, with all their harmony, which would correspond exactly to that of any kind of music 13 . This inventiveness shook enlightened Europe. While some composers as Rameau supported, most scholars criticized the monk's idea. Physicists who considered highly unlikely to establish any correspondence between light waves and sound waves, criticized Castel for misunderstanding the operation of our sensory mechanism. One couldn't neither see sound nor hear color, since sight and hearing involve different organs not susceptible to cross-function. Traces of these stormy discussions survived not only in philosophical, natural-scientific but also in literary works of that and later times. Encyclopédistes described the accord in painting as the harmony that reigns in the light & colors of a painting 14 . While the accord, in music, is the union of two or more sounds heard at the same time, forming together a regular harmony. Accordingly, sound is not reducible to space, because it has its own medium of diffusion that is time. Since space has its own medium of diffusion, the sound is irreducible to color. J.J. Rousseau, after having visited Castel's studio to get acquainted with the color harpsichord, strongly rejected the instrument in his role as a musicologist: Rousseau's defense about the false analogy between colors and sounds argues that each sense has its own field. The field of music is time and that of the painting is space. A sound by itself has no absolute character which makes it recognizable: it is low or high, strong or soft compared to another. To multiply the sounds heard at the same time, or to develop the colors one after the other would mean to put the eye in the place of the ear, and the ear in the place of the eye. The colors are durable, the sounds fade away, each color is absolute, independent, whereas each sound is for us only relative, and can only be distinguished by comparison.

OVERVIEW OF THE NARRATIVE
In the middle of this circle, the Italian scenographer Pietro Gonzaga examines the idea of the visible music. Gonzaga in his treatise, recalls Castel's failure and suggests that painting is an art of imitation rather than embellishment and handles the same criticism of Rousseau 16 made on Castel's inconsideration of the spacetime analogy: This wise mathematician observed that colours and sounds appeal equally so they are both susceptible to the same gradations, the same nuances, and have very similar harmonic ratios to combine. Castel concluded that they could produce the same effects; but this reverend father has not considered that the field of colours is space and that of sounds is time; the ears love to hear sounds successively one after the other and the eyes on the contrary love seeing the colours spread at the same time, close to each other. It seems that Castel never understood that this fleeting operation is against the properties of glance which wants to stop on the object 17 . 15 J.J. Rousseau, Essai sur l'origine des langues, où il est parlé de la Mélodie et de l'Imitation musicale (1781), dans Oeuvres, 8 voll., A. Belin, Paris 1817, IV, pp. 501-543. Edition électronique par D. Banda: http:// www.espace-rousseau.ch/f/textes/origine_des_langues.pdf (7/2022), ch. XVI, p. 58. It makes mention of the colors that are the adornment of inanimate beings, all matter is colored, yet the sounds announce movement, the voice announces a sentient being. Painting is often dead and inanimate. It is one of the great advantages of the musician to be able to paint things that can't be heard, while it is impossible for the painter to represent those that can't be seen. The art of the musician is to substitute the insensible image of the object for the movements elicited in the beholder by its mere presence. 16 In his music dictionary, J.J.Rousseau defines the mélodie as a succession of sounds ordered according to the rules of rhythm and modulation. Cf. Id., Dictionnaire de musique, Veuve Duchesne, Paris 1768, p. 29. 17

THE OCULAR HARPSICHORD «LA TOILET»
My intention is to illustrate the author's approach to the subject of embellishment both in music and architecture relating to 'physiognomical' features of rhythmic melodies of the contours and proportions. As inferences can be drawn from the following quotations, the author had a licentious habit of calling the ocular harpsichord, the 'toilet'. Here he tries the ocular harpsichord by trying to set a person to music: Let's see if the experiment can work or not. Let's take a very presentable young person and let the person pass through the different degrees of operations of the 'toilet' and it will be well to observe the changes resulting. The physiognomical traits and the proportions will be altered and accentuated in the whole transformation and we will notice the same difference passing between the speeches of the peasants and the ariette sung between the person who arrives from the village and the person who comes out of the 'toilet' 19 .

Let's examine in detail how this change occured:
She comes out of the 'toilet', with a combed head. What does this arrangement of head refer to? It is exactly the amplification of form and colours operated around a face. It's a physiognomy, a figure set to music, exaggerated by the natural disposition of features as colours, the musical rhythm, the syllabic accent of the words, nuances, and sound modulations, like a small poetic feeling becomes a breeze […] Like sounds, colours have their tones, their characteristic modes […] The most frequent and sharpest divisions give liveliness and strength to sounds and colours, those which simply continue over tempo are sweet, sad, grave, etc. In the same order, we can move on to embellish the whole person to create a slightly more complex piece of music 20 .

EVERY ORNATE BUILDING IS A PIECE OF MUSIC
The use of semantic similes as 'the division of space' and 'the division of time' in the paragraphs below, take us to support the analogy between music and architecture. In the same way, the traces of Rousseau's statement about the space-time analogy is clearly seen. Apparently, musical graphics and graphical architectonics seem to go hand-in-hand, therefore it shouldn't be surprising that various decorative styles appear as musical visualizations for the eyes: «it is clear that the division of space can operate in architecture, the same effects that the division of time produces in music» 21 .
Immediately after, the mention of some terms from the music terminology directs us to the theory of music, where an interval corresponds to the distance between two sounds. In the passage below, the concept of 'tempo' in music, corresponding to Italian terms such as: 'allegro vivace' and 'maestoso', is figuratively mentioned: The system of architectural orders contains the seeds of every expression, as the mere division of space produces pleasant sensations and makes the appearance of the buildings cheerful, graceful, majestic, noble, etc Saussure has used the term semiology to describe the science that would study «the life of signs within society», originally placing semiology within social psychology. He has suggested that «a sign is like a piece of paper: One side is the signifier and the other is the signified, and together they make the sign/sheet of paper» 24 .

EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION
During the 18 th century, several French styles were adopted by English, including that of the 'toilet'. As the name suggests, 'la toilet' refers to the French word for cloth, 'toile'. It additionally attributes to the whole complex of hairstyling and body care operations. In our case, the author associates musical modalities with all 'à la mode' forms arguing that all drawable forms could be described as visible music. Thus, there are similes used as well-combed people are like physiognomies placed into music; musicians-physiognomists are like hairdressers and the ocular harpsichord is the 'toilet'. The author had precisely referred to that is necessary to put welldressed women into music. Let us remember the 'clavier à lumières' of Alexander Scriabin who has placed the Luce (light) into the score of Prometheus, in the same way, aforementioned forms 'à la mode' were meant to be embellished by the ocular harpsichord. As a consequence of the attempts to visualize music in favor of the sense of sight and hearing, emerged the concept of the music of appearances or in the author's words the "artificial visions" (vision artificielles).

WHAT MUST HAVE AFFECTED THE AUTHOR?
According to the writer who witnessed three different Imperial periods of his time and operated as an artist at that time when the Napoleonic wars and British politics were in demand, the musical sound served to unite men to animate the great passions, directed the spirit and expressed an opinion. The signs, the mottos, the clothes, the formalities and the apparatus or decoration used as political instruments had a great potential for the effectiveness of their attractions and for the clarity of their meanings: Visions have been of great use in all nations of the world. Going through the history of all the peoples of Asia, that of the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, etc. we see that ceremonies have always been an instrument of politics, and the most civilized nations used ceremonies, formalities, and visions the most. The antiquity dominated the public spirit by solemnizing the acts with monuments and decorations 25 .
At the end of the chapter, the visible music discourse concludes with fireworks -a representative of victory; according to the author's description, firework is an artifice that has the greatest resemblance to the visible music.