Maupertuis et la science de la musique

Historians have constantly neglected Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis’s (1698-1759) irst academic work, On the Shape of the Musical Instruments (1724). This is all the more surprising if we consider the issues it raises from both an his- torical and a theoretical point of view. In order to solve such issues, in this paper we will give a thorough analysis of the main stages of Maupertuis’s intellectual apprenticeship, and of the possible sources of some of his doctrines as well. We are well aware that such an operation will yield nothing absolutely certain. In the worst case, however, we will have sketched an historical-philosophical framework within which the Breton savant took his irst steps: a pre-history of Maupertuis’s scientiic activity, which remains still largely unknown.