Esther Lederberg (see yellow arrow)
playing Renaissance and Baroque recorder music to accompany
period dances.
Esther Lederberg was not only a scientist, she also had many
cultural interests. These cultural interests included Renaissance
and Baroque music, as well as Renaissance and Baroque dance.
However, to appreciate the arts of the Renaissance and Baroque
periods, it is necessary to understand as many aspects of the
Renaissance and Baroque as the society at that time integrated
all aspects of the arts. Thus dance was integrated into garden
design, garden design was an extension of palace architecture,
architecture was perceived in terms of linear perspective, etc.
Social relationships became an aspect of the Renaissance and
Baroque politcal statecraft: the "decorum" of Baldassare
Castiglione, eventually becoming central to the "Sun King",
Louis IV.
Basic aspects of Classical thought run throughout all
the aspects of the Renaissance and Baroque arts. Specifically,
rhetoric tacens, the eloquent body (dance), the harmonic orator (music),
rhetoric muette, or meutte éloquence: performative rhetoric,
a rhetoric focused not upon text, but more focused upon gestures,
as gestures are found in art, music, dance, architecture, etc. In
addition to silent performative rhetoric, attitudes towards
proportion were focused upon harmonic ratios: important in
architecture, sculpture, music, dance, etc. These themes of
rhetoric and harmonic proportions as well as Platonic and
Euclidean geometry are found everywhere in Renaissance and Baroque
arts, and thus all aspects of Renaissance and Baroque aesthetics
should be studied. This was of interest to Esther Lederberg, the
scientist, and will be discussed below.
Esther Lederberg studied Renaissance and Baroque music at Stanford
university, and played the Baroque recorder. In addition, Esther Lederberg
also studied Baroque dance at Stanford university, under
Wendy Hilton.
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