A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Flud, Robert

by J. A. Fuller-Maitland

FLUD, or FLUDD, Robert, the son of Sir Thomas Flud, treasurer of war to Queen Elizabeth in France and the Low Countries, born at Milgate, in the parish of Bearsted in Kent, 1574. At the age of 17 he became a student of St. John's College, Oxford, where he studied physics. After a short time of residence he went abroad for six years, at the end of which time he returned and took the accumulated degrees of Bachelor and Doctor of Physics. In 1605 he was made a Fellow of the College of Physicians. From 1616 until his death he was engaged in the composition of various philosophical treaties, in which he refuted the theories of Kepler and Mersennus, and advocated those of the Rosicrucian and other mystics. In the history of philosophy his name is of some importance, since his writing exercised a powerful influence over Jacob Behmen. In musical literature he holds a far less prominent position, his chief connection with the art being found in a treatise printed at Oppenheim in 1617, entitled 'Utriusque cosmi majoris scilicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atque technica historia.' The following sections treat of musical phenomena: Tract I. Book iii. and Tract II. Part i. Book vi. and Part ii. Book iv. His 'Monochordum mundi symphoniacum,' written in reply to Kepler (Frankfort, 1622) contains a curious diagram of the universe, based on the divisions of a string. He died at his house in Coleman Street, Sept. 8, 1637, and was buried at Bearsted.

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