The Proscenium of Truth

HEADER: ANALYTICAL DISCOURSE.

...to have them upright, so that they might be included under the Author’s third book: but of these things, more will be said copiously below. In this place, there is no need to respond to the second part of his Text, because a most ample opportunity to satisfy the Reader in this matter will present itself in what follows.

TEXT IV.

Therefore, let us begin from his Artificial Music original: "Musica artificiali"; the technical study of man-made musical composition: He passes that down in seven books. In the first of these, he reviews the authors, the naming systems, and the power of music over the human soul. Concerning the Authors or the inventors of Music, I say nothing, or certainly very little; for my intent is to open up the causes of natural things.

ANALYSIS.

But truly, since in this context he contends that his intention was to open up the causes of natural things, and later asserts that he did not receive the subject of his Music from the ancients but drew it out from the nature of things and established it from its very foundations; why does he attempt to relate his physical or natural comparisons to "artificial" things? Or why does he compare his "natural" music with mine, which he himself acknowledges in express words to be "artificial," since no correct relationship is usually made between the concrete and the abstract Fludd argues you cannot compare a theoretical ideal (abstract) with a physical reality (concrete) without careful distinction?

He also mentions that he has dealt nothing, or certainly very few things, with the Authors of music; as if that were superfluous in my work. And yet, by his leave, we find in his own writings that he proposes more concerning the Authors of Music than I did: For in the beginning of his third book, he makes mention of Jubal A biblical figure mentioned in Genesis as the father of all who play the harp and flute, whom Moses counts as the first inventor of musical instruments or strings. This Jubal he takes to be Apollo; and he makes his brother Jabal the inventor of the pipe. Then he says that Pythagoras derived the musical consonances and proportions from the strikes of hammers, which he immediately transferred to the measurements and sections of strings, or the differences of sounds.

I also named these inventors of Music in my first book, and for this very reason, in my Musical Temple, beneath an arch supported by two columns, I depicted Pythagoras watching the blacksmiths striking the iron with their hammers. Finally, how the Author’s intention worked toward the fulfillment of the manifestation of natural things, I will narrate more widely below.

---

TEXT V.

In the second book, the Author approaches the things themselves, which he says are Intervals and Times original: "Intervalla & Tempora"; in music, this refers to pitch and rhythm/duration. Again, I have said almost nothing concerning "times," or the length or brevity of sounds: for they are arbitrary, nor do they require an investigation of causes.

ANALYSIS.

It is, however, agreeable to reason that we join times with Harmonic intervals, for without them no symphonic motion occurs. For the most exact proportion must be observed as much in the measure of time as in the dimension of a string or line, since no motion—by whose action Music sounds—occurs without time.

Hence, time is not ineptly defined as the measure of motion, not in the same moment, but according to the "before" (that is, the past) and the "after" (that is, the future), with its present flow; that is, with the moment or minute of present time which is called the Now.

Therefore, I wonder greatly that the Author, when he dealt precisely with Music or Harmony, confesses that he said almost nothing about "Times" or the length and brevity of sounds, since by the aforementioned reasoning nothing should be said of motion without time. Yet he acknowledges in the latter part of his Appendix, and everywhere in his fifth book, that the subject of his Mundane Harmony is the real motions of the Planets. Now, Physicists define motion as the progression of a movable subject from potentiality into act: a transition which is certainly numbered by time.

Why then did he omit "times" almost entirely except for the variety of sounds, when without them Music of any kind is clearly crippled and deficient, whether it be in the abstract (merely mathematical) or in the concrete (considered in Physics)? For with a diligent investigation of things leading the way, what usually produces harmony in the higher realms except the variety of the motions of the celestial bodies?

Did he not himself attribute low tones to Saturn, both in the beginning of his first book and in many places in the fifth? From this, he assigned to it the Cubic figure The Cube, one of the five Platonic Solids as if it were the heaviest of all because of the slowness of that star in its motion and its kinship with the earth. And he placed the Tetrahedron A four-sided triangular pyramid, which in size comes closest to the Cube, between Jupiter and Mars. He made the Octahedron An eight-sided solid for Mercury, the Icosahedron A twenty-sided solid for Venus, and the Dodecahedron A twelve-sided solid for the Earth, as if destined in the creation. From these, he clearly argues the differences of the Planetary consonances through various proportions of those Geometric bodies. For from where did he gather the gravity (low pitch) of Saturn, if not from its slow motion? Or the proximity of Jupiter to it because of the contact of the Cube, if not because Jupiter was next to Saturn in the weight of its motion,