Sing Aloud Harmonious Spheres

Renaissance Conceptions of Cosmic Harmony

Jacomien Prins, Maude Vanhaelen, Jacomien Prins, Maude Vanhaelen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351664189
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Literaturkritik des Mittelalters & der Frühen Neuzeit

This is the first volume to explore the reception of the Pythagorean doctrine of cosmic harmony within a variety of contexts, ranging chronologically from Plato to 18th-century England. This original collection of essays engages with contemporary debates concerning the relationship between music, philosophy, and science, and challenges the view that Renaissance discussions on cosmic harmony are either mere repetitions of ancient music theory or pre-figurations of the 'Scientific Revolution'. Utilizing this interdisciplinary approach, Renaissance Conceptions of Cosmic Harmony offers a new perspective on the reception of an important classical theme in various cultural, sequential and geographical contexts, underlying the continuities and changes between Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This project will be of particular interest within these emerging disciplines as they continue to explore the ideological significance of the various ways in which we appropriate the past.

Part I
Ancient and Medieval Sources

1 Eight Singing Sirens

Heavenly Harmonies in Plato and the Neoplatonists¹

Francesco Pelosi

Introduction

The myth of Er, at the end of Plato’s Republic, offers the first account of the notion of ‘music of the spheres’ in a Greek text.² In order to describe the destiny of human souls in the afterlife, Socrates reports the remarkable experience of Er, who comes back from the dead after a marvellous twelve-day journey in the hereafter. Among the impressive things that he witnesses and hears, the most astonishing is certainly the choir of the Sirens and the Fates, which takes place on the spindle of Necessity. The evocative power of sound pervades these pages of the Republic, enriching the language of the myth with a fascinating expressivity. The afterworld explored by Er is a landscape characterized by loud acoustic allurements: it is shaken by the rumble of the Tartar and enchanted by the heavenly melodies of the Sirens and the Fates. Presumably for this reason, Er’s myth continued to haunt the minds of many Renaissance scholars.

Plato’s notion of the harmony of the spheres—introduced in Er’s account and then presented in the harmonic construction of the World Soul in the Timaeus (see below pp. 16–20)—was destined to have a pervasive and abiding influence in the history of Western thought. The idea that perfect music on earth can effectively express heavenly harmony forms the basis of the concept of music as having a cosmological range. This essay deals with the beginnings of this enduring concept and explores its appearance in the works of several ancient Greek philosophers. It focuses primarily on theories of perception and the relationship between the physical and mental realms in some ancient Greek treatments of the music of the heavens, which exerted considerable influence on Renaissance conceptions of world harmony. In particular, two closely related topics are investigated: first, how heavenly music is conceived of in terms of sensible and intelligible contents, and second, it explores the question of whether it is possible to perceive this music and, if so, how one can determine the significance of this experience. I shall begin with Plato’s philosophy of music, which raises some crucial questions about the distinction between a perfect, intelligible, paradigmatic music and an imperfect, earthly one, and also the role of perception and intellect in musical experiences. After a brief analysis of Aristotle’s refutation of the heavenly harmony theory in On the Heavens, the second part of this study will explore the notion of celestial music in the Neoplatonic philosophy of Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, and Simplicius.

The Myth of Er and the Cosmogony of the Timaeus

The celestial harmony described in Book X of the Republic issues from the spindle of Necessity, which hangs from a beam of light, which is straight like a column and stretched throughout the whole of heaven and earth.³ The spindle whorl consists of eight concentric whorls, which fit into each other as a set of rotating spheres nested with one another. As such, they represent the orbits of the heavenly bodies (from the outer to the inner orbits): the fixed stars, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, and the Moon. Plato describes the widths, colours, and speeds of these whorls, as well as their sonorous expression, thus depicting a universe rich in visual and acoustic stimuli. The spindle, as a whole, moves toward the right, while the seven inner whorls move in the opposite direction. On each whorl a Siren follows the movement, while uttering ‘a single sound, a single pitch’;⁴ from all the eight sounds the concord of a single harmony is produced.⁵ The Fates sit around and ‘sing to the Sirens’ harmony’:⁶ Lachesis sings the past, Clotho the present, and Atropos the future, while they follow with their hands the movements of the whorls.

The Sirens’ and the Fates’ concert is so captivating that it generates a strong temptation to grasp it, be it by ‘listening to it’ with human ears or by reproducing it in earthly music. Even so, the myth of Er is so elusive that it escapes a strictly musical reading. The heavenly harmony of Republic X derives from the encounter between the Sirens’ harmonia and the Fates’ songs. The relationship between the two performances is not clearly explained. The only clue Plato gives us is the idea that the Fates sing ‘to the harmonia of the Sirens’.⁷ This could suggest that the Sirens’ harmonia is like a permanent background track, or a musical drone, for the melody (or melodies) of the Fates. With regard to the Fates’ songs, the text does not provide a clear description of their melodies, apart from their verbal content (past, present, and future).⁸

Furthermore, Plato does not explain whether the pitch of the notes uttered by the Sirens depends on the speeds of the orbits or any other material feature of the astronomical system; thus, it is difficult for us to offer a detailed musical interpretation of the passage. As will be seen in subsequent chapters, Renaissance scholars were confronted with this very same problem. We may assume that the pitch of the notes depends on the velocity of the whorls: this is the most obvious hypothesis. It is based on ancient acoustic theories, which often consider the pitch of a sound to be dependent on its velocity. However, in this case, one would expect the existence of six notes, not eight, because we are told that the Sun, Venus and Mercury move at the same speed. Nonetheless, if we were to take into account Plato’s statement that the orbits of the three bodies have different sizes (Mercury’s orbit is larger than Venus’, which is larger than the Sun’s orbit), we would end up with an eight-note scale, as the actual speeds of these three planets would be different.⁹ If we accept this interpretation, another major difficulty emerges: despite the presence of terms such as harmonia and symphonein, which hint at a delightful melody, in terms of a scale used in earthly music the song of the Sirens would result in a disharmonious cluster, because all the tones of an octave would be sounding simultaneously. From Antiquity to modern times, commentators have sought to solve this aporia. Thus they have suggested that harmonia should not be interpreted as simultaneous sounds, but as notes produced in succession, according to the most common meaning in ancient Greek music.¹⁰ Even so, the passage mentioned above undeniably describes a musical performance in which a simultaneous production of notes occurs.¹¹ I propose that both the notions of simultaneous sounds and of sounds in succession are implicated in the passage. The key term here is symphonein, which alludes to the phenomenon of concord and is commonly associated in ancient musical theory with the horizontal development of melody (concord as a significant interval of notes in sequence) and the vertical dimension of the simultaneous production of sounds (concord as the perfect blending of two sounds, where the two sounds are indistinguishable to perception). Furthermore, the word symphonein also implies two aspects that are perfectly integrated in the phenomenon of concord: the intellectual dimension of numerical ratios and the perceptive dimension of auditory effects.

According to my interpretation, Plato’s statement that the Sirens’ melody produces a concord means that they produce a music whose perfection emerges from a complex system of values, linked to both the intellective and perceptive contents of the musical phenomena. Therefore, what is described here is a sonorous music and not a sort of conceptual arrangement of the heavens based on harmonics or music theory. In other words, the movements of the heavenly bodies are meant to produce audible effects, and this sonorous music is conceived of as pleasant. It is highly significant, as Guthrie pointed out, that the argument of the cacophony produced by all the tones of an octave sounding simultaneously does not appear in any ancient criticisms of the theory of universal harmony: the extraordinary aesthetic qualities of heavenly music are not under discussion.¹²

The idea that heavenly harmony is a sonorous and pleasant music of the spheres characterizes most ancient speculations on the doctrine.¹³ Often highly sophisticated both from a musical and an astronomical point of view, these speculations are richer in musical details than Er’s account—some of them attempt to explain Er’s celestial music so as to provide a consistent interpretation of this complex passage. Music theory, as well as astronomical doctrines, might well have shaped the idea of a universal harmony, but the development of this notion is not linked to any specific musical and astronomical doctrines.¹⁴ These doctrines are rather a rich reservoir on which all ancient philosophers could draw when expressing philosophical ideas about the cosmos and the soul’s faculties. Thus, the philosophical questions that derive from conceptions of world harmony deserve the same attention as the musical ones.

A crucial philosophical point in ancient speculations on heavenly harmony is the relationship between intelligible, perfect musical structures and their sensible, sonorous expressions. According to Plato, the sensible contents of music, especially in the case of a heavenly music, are only imperfect manifestations of an ideal intelligible order. The perfection of the Sirens’ melody is expressed by the musical notion central in Republic 617b4–7: the octave that is at once a perfect concord and a system of perfect concords.¹⁵ The octave, with its perfect system of intervals, is the musical core of another famous Platonic passage based on astronomical and musical notions: the creation of the World Soul at Timaeus 35a–36d. This passage shares numerous analogies with the cosmological system described in Book X of the Republic, and in both cases, the web of astronomical and musical notions cannot be unravelled into detailed and consistent astronomical and musical systems.¹⁶ The best way to define these passages is to view them as descriptions of the ‘harmonies and movements of the universe’—to borrow an expression from Timaeus 90d3–4. Better than any other Platonic dialogue, the Timaeus explores the relationship between the order of the cosmos, the psycho-physical structure of human beings, and the role of music. The World Soul, that is, the order of the universe, and the structure of the human rational soul are essentially the same, and they are based on precise musical intervals. The creation of the Soul involves a complex process of division, according to precise musical intervals that describe a diatonic octave. The outcome of the whole process is a psychic structure made up of two orbits, characterized by circular movements, the orbit of the Same and the orbit of the Different. The Same, the outside circle with the role of command, proceeds in a uniform and constant manner towards the right; it represents the fixed stars. The Different is divided, according to precise intervals, into seven unequal circles moving in opposite directions to each other; they represent the orbits of the Sun, Venus and Mercury, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Three of them move at a similar speed (as in Republic 617a8–b1: the Sun, Venus, and Mercury), while the other four move at different speeds, but always in relation to precise ratios (36c–d).

Certainly, there are striking analogies between this passage and the more poetical account of Er’s myth. While the Timaeus does not hint at a sonorous expression of this cosmic music, this does not mean, to my mind, that the heavenly harmony described in the dialogue is just an abstract construction based on musical numerology.¹⁷ Leaving aside the question as to whether the World Soul actually produces a sound, the passage in Timaeus 35b–36b gives the sensible human experience of listening to music a metaphysical significance: listening to music is a means for the human soul to tune itself with the cosmic order. The analogy between the motion of cosmic harmony and the movements of the rational soul is the basis for the ordering action that harmony exercises over the soul. In earthly music, the rational soul can perceive perfect harmonic ratios that constitute both its inner nature and also the essence of the cosmic order (Timaeus 47c–e). The idea of a similarity between the heavenly music and the harmony of the human soul was highly influential in Pythagorean and Platonic theories. Some two thousand years later, it appeared in many Renais...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I Ancient and Medieval Sources
• PART II The Revival of the Doctrine of the Pythagorean Harmony of the Universe in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy and Germany
• PART III The Tradition of the Harmony of the Spheres in Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century Europe and New Spain
• Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Index