Alchemy and Music | Nature


Alchemy and Music | Nature

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ABSTRACT THE first combined meeting of the Chemical and Musical Societies in the history of the ancient University of St. Andrews was held in the Chemistry Lecture Theatre of the United


College, St. Andrews, on April 24, when Prof. John Read, professor of chemistry, delivered an illustrated lecture under the title: “The Frankfurt Emblems: a Research in 17th Century


Alchemy”. The culminating event of the evening was the singing, possibly for the first time in three hundred years, of some unique alchemical music which Prof. Read encountered some time ago


in his alchemical studies, and which has formed the subject of a recent research by Mr. F. H. Sawyer, lecturer in music in the University of St. Andrews. Alchemy, said Prof. Read, has been


variously defined as the pretended art of transmuting base metals into gold, as the chemistry of the Middle Ages, and so forth; but in its broadest aspect it was a system of philosophy which


claimed to penetrate the mystery of life as well as the formation of inanimate substances. Like modern science, alchemy had its theories, notably the theory of the four elements, with the


allied conception of the Philosopher's Stone, and the sulphur-mercury theory of the constitution of metals. Alchemical theory, however, like alchemical symbolism, is a complex and


intricate subject, rendered even more difficult by its protean character of change. The age of alchemy extended approximately from the early years of the Christian era until the end of the


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Contact customer support RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Alchemy and Music. _Nature_ 135, 967–968 (1935).


https://doi.org/10.1038/135967a0 Download citation * Issue Date: 08 June 1935 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135967a0 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the following link with will be able


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