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‘The more perfect the maker, the more perfect the product’: Descartes and fabrication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

André Gombay
Affiliation:
University of Toronto

Extract

1. Legend has it that as Mozart lay dying, a stranger dressed in black entered the room. Without saying word, he walked to the death-bed, removed the manuscript sheets of the Requiem on which the composer had been working until his final hours, and departed. This was not as you might have thought an envoy from beyond—but the servant of a certain Viennese nobleman, Count Walsegg zu Stuppach. The Count was in the habit of commissioning music anonymously, and having it played in his palace as though it were his own. In extremis he was collecting the score for a forthcoming soirée.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1996

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