LGM Classical – Did Descartes Play The Lute?
By 
In moving to Bluesky, I’ve found new people to follow. One is Helen de Cruz, who is a philosopher of wonder and awe. I haven’t bought her book yet, but this a subject that fascinates me.
She also has a substack, “Wondering Freely.” (Yes, I know about Substack and I am very tired of moralistic screeds.) Recently she wrote about Schopenhauer’s flute and Descartes’s lute. It’s clear that Schopenhauer played the flute, not so clear that Descartes played the lute. You’ll have to click over to read Nietzsche’s ragging of Schopenhauer, but I have some thoughts about Descartes and his lute.
I’ve been feeling awe and wonderment lately at the exercises my piano teacher assigns me to help me move my fingers more quickly, something I thought I couldn’t do. I’ve also tried to answer a question from a friend who is not a musician about how making music feels. It’s also something my teacher and I talk about a lot in trying to improve my playing.
Dr. de Cruz is looking for material that might show that Descartes actually played the lute. He writes about the vibration of lute strings, but that does not necessarily require him to have played the instrument. She finds one reference in a letter that may indicate that Descartes understood the experience of playing an instrument.
But I think that it is the other parts of the brain, especially the interior parts, which most serve memory. I think that all the nerves and muscles can serve it, too, so that a lute player, for instance, has a part of his memory in his hands: for the ease of bending and disposing his fingers in various ways, which he has acquired by practice, helps him to remember the passages which need these dispositions when they are played.—1 April 1640, Letter by René Descartes to Marin Mersenne
The interplay of conscious intention, movements of one’s body, allowing things to flow unconsciously, and being able to reflect on all that is essential in learning how to play an instrument. The bolded part of Descartes’s letter is today sometimes called “muscle memory,” although there are objections to that term. In any case, anyone who has played an instrument knows those bolded words.
But perhaps Descartes got this description from Thomas Aquinas, who may have gotten it from Ibn Sina, de Cruz notes. Suggestive evidence, but not definite proof Descartes played the lute.
Here’s a piece he might have played: