Antonio Eximeno

Antonio Eximeno y Pujades SJ (Catalan: Antoni Eiximeno i Pujades; 26 September 1729 – 9 July 1809), Spanish Roman Catholic priest, mathematician, philosopher and musicologist. He wrote in Spanish, Italian and Latin. Eximeno was one of the main authors of the Spanish Universalist School.

Biography

Antonio Eximeno y Pujades was born in Valencia, the son of Vicente Eximeno and María Francisca Pujades. He studied humanities at the University of Valencia and was a disciple of the Jesuit Tomás Serrano. He entered the Society of Jesus on 15 October 1745. He later taught rhetoric at the Seminary of Nobles in Valencia and mathematics at the College of San Pablo in the same city.

At the suggestion of Count Félix Gazzola, who informed him personally on 9 November 1763, he was appointed first professor at the Royal College of Artillery, a post he combined with that of professor of mathematics. After taking up his post, he was mainly occupied with preparatory work for the opening of the college, which was celebrated with great solemnity on 16 May 1764.

In this act, Eximeno delivers his splendid oration entitled: "The importance of the Study of Theoretical Studies to carry out the Practice of the Royal Service of H.M.". He completed his words with an exhortation addressed to the young cadets, in which he proclaimed that the aim was to create a college of heroes that would spread military talent and spirit in Spain. He emphasised the destiny to which they were called, the importance of work in study, the fatigue of the campaign, subordination, gallantry in treatment, the conquest of the tribunes and respect for the things of religion. In his speech he condenses the school's educational system, which involves the assumption and approach to artillery teaching from the essential basis of the theoretical mathematical-scientific foundation of artillery practice.

From the establishment of the college, Eximeno ensured its smooth running and showed a zealous concern for the studies and the ethical training of the students. With his resolute direction, he shaped the pedagogical lines of the Royal College, laying the foundations for the high reputation it would achieve in Spain and in Europe.

After the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, Eximeno lived in Rome and left the Society of Jesus. He abandoned his career as a mathematician, devoting himself to musical theory and philosophy, for which he received a double pension (750 reales) granted to him by Charles III in recognition of his former services at the Royal College of Artillery. In Rome he entered the Academy of Arcadia under the name of "Aristosseno Megareo" and sent the manuscripts of his Philosophical-Mathematical Institutions to Spain for publication. Unfortunately, the third volume was lost in a shipwreck. In the prologue to this work he shows himself to be a firm follower of the English Empiricism of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and the Sensualism of Condillac's Treatise on Sensations.

In Italy he entered into a complex theoretical and historiographical controversy with Martini about the foundations of music. He also maintained an intense relationship with the Jesuit Juan Andrés, the father of Universal Literature and a comparatist like him, who was based in Mantua. Together with the aforementioned Andrés and Lorenzo Hervás, he formed the nucleus of the so-called Spanish Universalist School. After Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion, Eximeno took advantage of the situation to travel to Genoa (a journey on which he lost his library to corsairs), finally arriving in Valencia on 28 July 1798. In Spain he was interrogated by the Inquisition for his work The Spirit of Machiavelli, which was banned. Despite having left the Society of Jesus, he was again expelled from Spain by the new Expulsion Law of 1801. He returned to Rome, where he died on 9 July 1809.

Works

Musicological work

Antonio Eximeno was called "the Newton" of music for having established a new musical system, refuting those of Tartini, Euler, Rameau and D'Alembert "and other ancient and modern philosophers and practitioners, who suppose music to be part of mathematics, and claim that counterpoint should be based on the canto-llano". Eximeno also said that he would "examine the nature of artificial counterpoint, and prove that that part of it to which the chapel masters gave greater importance was nothing but a remnant of Gothic taste, or bad taste, introduced into Europe by the barbarians". The historigraphic importance of Eximeno's interpretation, his historical conceptual clairvoyance as well as his assimilation of the historiological criteria of his own time is proverbial, as is his pioneering elaboration from the perspective of ethnomusicology.

Eximeno is musicologically an innovative thinker, but not only because of his historical interpretation but, more importantly, because of his musical aesthetic theory, for by making music and speech coincide through 'prosody', he assumes the direct and immediate relation 'instinct' — 'expression', anticipating the equational postulate 'intuition' — 'expression' formulated at the beginning of the twentieth century by Benedetto Croce. Eximeno's operation announces the reformulation of a first aesthetic category de facto placed before the central categories as values and which in fact, only apparently paradoxically, recovers the essential aesthetic concept of baroque roots.

Fictional and critical work

He wrote an interesting two-volume novel, Don Lazarillo Viscardi, a sort of parody of Don Quixote, in which he expounds his musical theories and harshly satirizes not the books of Cerone and Nassarre but the established academic system. It was published by Francisco Asenjo Barbieri in 1872.

In addition, his Cervantes perspective is enriched by a critical and satirical essay in 1806 against the academics Vicente de los Ríos and Gregorio Mayans, entitled Apología de Cervantes (Apology of Cervantes).

Philosophical work

His Philosophical-Mathematical Institutions is a treatise on physics, mathematics and psychological analysis of the faculties of the human mind and the origin of knowledge. It is inspired by Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Condillac's Treatise on Sensations. Menéndez Pelayo summarises his philosophy in 8 points:

1. Everything that man does, feels, meditates and desires, must, as a last resort, be concerned with his own usefulness and preservation.
2. Everything that man feels, thinks and wants is inseparable from some pleasure or pain.
3. There is no idea that has not been acquired through some sense, not even the very idea of God.
4. Perceptions, sensations or impressions (for Eximeno they are all one) remain in the memory, and they are exalted among themselves by a certain nexus, which consists of the same texture of the fibres of the organ, which links together the vestiges of the ideas.
5. All the pleasures and pains of man tend to one and the simplest end, namely, to his delightful preservation, all ideas conspiring to warn man to take care and preserve himself in order to enjoy the pleasures of life. Every idea is accompanied by some pleasant or unpleasant impression.
6. Man is endowed with the faculty of comparing and linking ideas and of changing the link and order in which they are generated. This is called the active faculty of the soul.
7. General ideas are formed by comparison of individual ideas and by abstraction.
8. The perception of present pleasure or pain is the reason that determines man to will or not to will.

See also

• Stefano Arteaga

References

Bono Guardiola, María José (1996). ""El espíritu de Maquiavelo" de Antonio Eximeno." In: Juan A. Ríos Carratalá, Enrique Giménez & Miguel Ángel Lozano Marco, eds., Españoles en Italia e italianos en España: IV Encuentro de investigadores de las universidades de Alicante y Macerata (mayo, 1995). Departamento de Filología Española, Departamento de Historia Medieval y Moderna, Universidad de Alicante, pp. 39–52.

Etzion, Judith (1998). "Spanish Music as Perceived in Western Music Historiography: A Case of the Black Legend?," International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol. XXIX, No. 2, pp. 93–120.

Galeazzi, Francesco (2012). The Theoretical-Practical Elements of Music, Parts III and IV. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press.

Gallego Gallego, Antonio (2015). Número sonoro o lengua de la pasión. La música ilustrada de los jesuitas expulsos. SantCugat, Barcelona: Editorial Arpegio.

García Laborda, José M. (1985). "Consideraciones sobre la Concepción Armónica de Antonio Eximeno," Revista de Musicología, Vol. VIII, No. 1, pp. 125–33.

Guzmán Ozámiz, Miguel de; Santiago Garma Pons (1980). "El pensamiento matemático de Antonio Eximeno," Llull: Revista de la Sociedad Española de Historia de las Ciencias y de las Técnicas, Vol. III, No. 5, pp. 3–38.

Hernández Mateos, Alberto (2012). "«Progresso, Decadenza e Rinnovazione»: El Pensamiento Historiográfico-Musical de Antonio Eximeno," Il Saggiatore musicale, Vol. XIX, No. 2, pp. 199–213.

Hernández Mateos, Alberto (2013a). "«Maestrazos de Contrapunto, Rutineros Maquinales, Chabacanos Seguidilleros». La Recepción Polémica del Pensamiento de Antonio Eximeno en el Diario de Madrid (1796-1804)," Revista de Musicología, Vol. XXXVI, No. 1/2, pp. 189–224.

Hernández Mateos, Alberto (2013b). "La recepción del pensamiento de Antonio Eximeno en la historiografía musical española del siglo XIX: una aproximación." In: Javier Marín-López, Germán Gan Quesada & Elena Torres Clemente, eds., Musicología global, musicología local. Madrid: Sociedad Española de Musicología, pp. 1539–58.

Hernández Mateos, Alberto (2014). "El Pensamiento Musical de Antonio Eximeno," Revista de Musicología, Vol. XXXVII, No. 1, pp. 307–14.

Hernández Mateos, Alberto (2019). "Palabras exiliadas. Rasgos comunes en los discursos sobre la música de Antonio Eximeno, Juan Andrés y Esteban de Arteaga." In: Víctor Sánchez Sánchez, ed., Intercambios musicales entre España e Italia en los siglos XVIII y XIX. Bologna: UT Orpheus, 113–53.

Hernández Mateos, Alberto (2021). "‘Utile dulci': modelos didáctico-musicales y género literario en las Investigaciones músicas de Don Lazarillo Vizcardi, de Antonio Eximeno (1729–1809)," Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Vol. XCVIII, No. 9, pp. 1411–42.

Hernández Mateos, Alberto (2022). "La teoría de la ópera de Antonio Eximeno y Juan Andrés." In: Pedro Aullón de Haro, ed., Idea de la Ilustración: Estudios sobre la Escuela Universalista. Madrid: Verbum, pp. 241–68.

Jacobs, Helmut C. (2001). "Die Rolle der Musik in der ästhetischen Diskussion der spanischen Aufklärung," Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, Vol. LVIII, No. 3, pp. 181–200.

Mancho, Ricardo Rodrigo (2005). "La visita del convento de la Magdalena de Massamagrell: un lance de don Lazarillo Vizcardi, novela de Antonio Eximeno." In: Natalia Álvarez Méndez & José Enrique Martínez Fernández, eds., El mundo del padre Isla. León: Universidad de León, Secretariado de Publicaciones, pp. 519–33.

Pedrell, Felip (1920). P. Antonio Eximeno. Glosario de la gran remoción de ideas que para mejoramiento de la técnica y estética del arte músico ejerció el insigne jesuita valenciano. Madrid: Unión Musical Española.

Picó Pascual, Miguel Ángel (2002). "El Proceso Inquisitorial del Padre Eximeno," Revista de Musicología, Vol. XXV, No. 2, pp. 545–72.

Picó Pascual, Miguel Ángel (2003). El padre Antonio Eximeno Pujades. Valencia: Alfons el Magnánim.

Pollin, Alice M. (1957). "Toward an Understanding of Antonio Eximeno," Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. X, No. 2, pp. 86–96.

Pollin, Alice M. (1958). ""Don Quijote" en las Obras del P. Antonio Eximeno," PMLA, Vol. LXXIV, No. 5, pp. 568–75.

Zaldívar Gracia, Alvaro (1998). "Antonio Eximeno y Fray Pablo Nassarre: berve crónica de un desencuentro imaginario," Nassarre: Revista aragonesa de musicología, Vol. XIV, No. 2, pp. 79–116.

External links

• Works by Antonio Eximeno at Gallica
• Works by Antonio Eximeno at Open Library
• Works by Antonio Eximeno at National Library of Spain
• Works by Antonio Eximeno at Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library