MARIN MERSENNEMERSENNE, MARINMARIN MERSENNE [* 1588-† 1648] Marin Mersenne, a French Jesuit who displayed a remarkable range of learning and devotion to scholarship, absorbed and wrote on many aspects of contemporary musical knowledge. He favored scientific pursuits but also contemplated topics such as the differences between the French and Italian music of his day. His experiments on the vibrations of strings of variable length, diameter, mass, and tension established fundamental acoustical…