This essay examines the notion of tact at the intersection of technology, music, and literature around 1800. Focusing on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann and Die Automate, it situates his texts in the longer history of musical automata in the eighteenth century and alongside the invention of the metronome by Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel and Johann Nepomuk Maelzel in the early 19th century. This mechanization of music spurred debates about the problem of aesthetic order among composers and music critics, specifically about different conceptions of musical tact. Against this background the article reads Hoffmann’s texts as an attempt to articulate an inner sense of tact at once dependent on and irreducible to the mechanical musical instruments of his contemporaries.

中文翻译：

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机智感：霍夫曼、梅尔策尔和机械音乐

本文考察了 1800 年左右技术、音乐和文学交叉点的机智概念。重点关注 ETA Hoffmann 的 Der Sandmann 和 Die Automate，将他的文本置于 18 世纪音乐自动机的较长历史中，并与19 世纪初，迪特里希·尼古拉斯·温克尔 (Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel) 和约翰·内波穆克·梅尔策 (Johann Nepomuk Maelzel) 制作了节拍器。这种音乐的机械化引发了作曲家和音乐评论家之间关于审美秩序问题的争论，特别是关于不同的音乐技巧概念。在这种背景下，这篇文章将霍夫曼的文本解读为试图阐明一种内在的机智感，这种感觉既依赖于同时代人的机械乐器，又无法还原到他的同时代人的机械乐器。