Discuss the impact of the Scientific Revolution on European art and music

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The new science engendered a spirit of objective inquiry in philosophy, and inspired new directions in the visual and musical arts.
Like the scientist's quest for objectivity, artists (especially the Dutch masters) practiced the "art of describing." Art took on an almost photographic quality, showing a passion for detail and realistic representation. Works of natural landscapes also became popular, showing a close attention to detail and a sensitivity to atmosphere that brought to life a sense of place and the vastness of nature itself. As artists' quest for detail became more involved, the world of science actually provided a way for painters to analyze a scene and recreate all the minutiae. Scholars argue that Vermeer, the exemplar in an age of observation, executed his paintings with the aid of a camera obscura, an apparatus that anticipated the modern pinhole camera.
In music, the empirical method provided a way for instrument makers to experiment and refine their creations. Tuning methods, also, evolved from the mathematical studies of acoustical properties. By the early eighteenth century, musicians were adopting the system of tuning known as equal temperament, whereby the octave was divided into twelve half-steps of equal size. The new attention to improving instruments and systematizing keys mirrored the efforts of scientists and philosophers to bring precision and uniformity to the tools and methods of scientific inquiry. Construction of compositions, too, took on a scientific approach, as composers used rigorous processes to investigate all possible permutations of an idea or theme. Further, the idea of music as an aesthetic exercise, with no religious connotations, was a notable feature of seventeenth-century European culture.