Co-edited with Donna Bilak: Furnace and Fugue: A Digital Edition of Michael Maier’s Atalanta fugiens (1618) with Scholarly Commentary. Available as an open-access, digital publication from the University of Virginia Press.
In 1618, on the eve of the Thirty Years War, the German alchemist and physician Michael Maier published Atalanta fugiens, an intriguing and complex musical alchemical emblem book designed to engage the ear, eye, and intellect. The book unfolds as a series of fifty emblems, each of which contains a motto, a copperplate etching, an epigram in German and Latin, and an accompanying “fugue,” i.e., music scored for three voices. Each emblem/fugue set is followed by a Latin discourse in which Maier points to particular works from the alchemical corpus, providing bibliographic clues for the reader to use in unlocking the emblem’s hidden meaning. Historians of alchemy have long understood this virtuoso work as an ambitious demonstration of the art’s literary potential, an experiment with genre and the possibilities of the early modern printed book. More recently, scholars have noted that Maier’s emblems also encode actual laboratory materials and technologies, inviting us to revisit the book not only as a display of erudition and a paean to the philosophers’ stone but also as a puzzle, a tool that can be used to generate endless new insights into nature’s secrets.
Atalanta fugiens lends itself unusually well to experimentation with digital tools and technologies available today. Re-rendering Maier’s multimedia alchemical project as an enhanced online publication, Furnace and Fugue allows contemporary readers to hear, see, manipulate, and investigate Atalanta fugiens in ways that were perhaps imagined when it was created yet impossible to fully realize before now. An interactive, layered digital edition provides accessibility and flexibility to readers, presenting all the elements of the original book along with significant enhancements that allow for deep engagement by specialists and non-specialists alike: a fully searchable English translation sourced from a seventeenth-century manuscript housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University; high resolution, zoomable images; newly commissioned, manipulable vocal recordings of Atalanta’s music; a downloadable performance edition featuring modernized musical notation; and a multifunctional space that allows users to curate, save, and share their own selection and arrangement of Maier’s emblems. Furnace and Fugue makes possible the playful capabilities implied by Atalanta fugiens while also enabling and encouraging new interpretations of this early modern emblem book. Three short, introductory essays invite readers to get acquainted with early modern alchemy, printing, and Michael Maier. Eight extended, interpretive essays explore Atalanta fugiens and its place in the history of music, science, print, and visual culture in early modern Europe. These interdisciplinary essays include interactive features that clarify and/or advance the authors’ arguments while positioning Furnace and Fugue as an original, uniquely engaging contribution to our understanding of early modern culture.
Book events
Furnace and Fugue Book Launch. University of Virginia Press, August 25, 2020
Molly Taylor-Poleskey interviews Bilak and Nummedal for the New Books Network podcast, Oct. 21, 2020
Furnace and Fugue: An Alchemical Happy Hour. Science History Institute, Streamed Live on YouTube on Oct. 29, 2020