Following the example of Michel Serres, who wrote Le système de Leibniz et ses modèles mathématiques in 1968, this idea aims at revisiting the same system, this time following the musical paradigms, without of course reaching the opulence and the richness of this writing.

It seems to us that Leibniz's work itself could actually be considered like a musical structure and be connected to a musician-composer, such as Johann Sebastian Bach.

Let's go back a moment to both men's biographies.

It is obvious that we are only going to return to Johann Sebastian Bach's fame briefly, for you all know him very well. As the pupil of a former student of Schütz' he was fascinated by his elder Buxtehude to whose house he stayed longer than was planned; he played the violin, the organ, the harpsichord and he sang: everything went his way to young Johann Sebastian Bach. He married Maria Barbara, had two kids among whom were Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Phillip Emmanuel, the one who studied law and philosophy at Leipzig university under the leadership of Wolf, Leibniz's student.

Actually, as to Leibniz, he studied and taught at the university, before leaving his position. As a philosopher and a mathematician he discovered at the same time as Newton the calculation repository. He also wrote Monadology about which Gilles Deleuze clearly makes himself clear in Le pli: he believes in the existence of innate ideas, also knowing how to adjust his discourse following a theory according to which everything adapts in the world depending on the interaction between others.

Thus, although the contradictions be sound, with Bach and Leibniz alike, the based aesthetic stating that rhetoric seems to be vanishing (at least a great part of it) to the benefit of some kind of combinatorial. The art of series, more based on harmony than on melodic developments, strangely reminds us of some kind of actuality of artistic creation which builds the resounding architecture following mathematical and technical principles.

Whether it be an unconscious calculation from the soul or the hope of a universal language, music is the very model of the philosopher's work; as the structure and the fundamental dynamic, it seems to wholly envelop his philosophical system; On the other hand, not only does Bach appear as an example, but as an actor on the subject too, building his work in such a way that it perfectly corresponds to the Wolfian theory...which is the one of Leibniz. Whose fault is it? His favourite son's!

The texts that clearly refer to music as such are not numerous enough and not interesting enough to make them the basis of our study. We thus have to look somewhere else. Now, the whole of Leibniz's writings, if they do not really state a theory on music, nevertheless include blatant allusions to this resounding art, like clues of the big concert his thought invites us to.

As to Johann Sebastian Bach's music, it shows the very accomplished result of a musical writing style and disturbs at the same time the baroque aesthetic boundaries to project itself two centuries later in a Berg's or a Schoenberg's writing....

Would he then owe this fit of modernity to mathematical advancements? To the invention of differential calculus? Or even to the influence of a philosopher such as Leibniz?

And would the latter not have built his conceptual device from these compositions by Bach, so skilfully different, whose “too intellectual” aspect was criticised?

To avoid losing ourselves in the infinity of their respective works, we chose Monadology as the main support for this study for it concentrates Leibniz's tought as a whole.

If you wish to know more about this uncommon interaction, let's meet in the next editorial !

Coralie Welcomme

Translation : Alexandra Maffei