Abstract

Abstract‘Stimmung’. The Career of a Concept in Music and Science between 1750 and 1850. The German word ‘Stimmung’ originally refers to the musical praxis of tuning instruments. Whereas the English concepts of ‘tonus’ and ‘atunement’ used to describe the physical status of the body developed independently from the psychological ‘mood’, ‘Stimmung’ was used metaphorically in both physiology and psychology in the discussed period. This leads to various interrelations between the areas of knowledge involved. The paper investigates these on a synchronic and diachronic level. By concentrating a) on the analogy between musical strings and nerve fibres within the framework of a mechanistic conception of the body and b) on the metaphoric use of ‘Stimmung’ as a psychological concept describing the general mood of an individual, it becomes evident that the different metaphorical adaptations do not only have consequences within the specific area of knowledge, but also lead to distinct interpretations of musical effect. The second half of the paper concentrates on the diachronic development of ‘Stimmung’ in physiology and analyses the shifts within the semantic field of the metaphor occurring during the transformation from a mechanical to an organic conception of the body. On a theoretical level the emphasis lies on the conceptual potential of vague metaphors and the function of marginal metaphors in periods of theory change. In this context the results question Thomas Kuhns theory of an abrupt, gestaltlike change of theory by emphasizing the importance of continuous shifts within the semantic fields of vague metaphors.