The Harmonic Institutions

12

Of Worldly Music. Chap. 6.

RESUMING, therefore, Animastica soul-based music, we shall say that it is of two kinds: Worldly and Human. Worldly music is that harmony which is known to exist not only among those things that are seen and known in the heavens, but is also understood in the bonding of the Elements and in the variety of the seasons. I say that they are seen and known in the heavens by the Revolution, the Distances, and the Parts of the celestial spheres, and by the Aspects, the Nature, and the Sound of the seven planets, which are the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. It was the opinion of many ancient philosophers, and especially of Pythagoras, that a revolution of such a great machine with such fast movement cannot pass without emitting some sound. Although this opinion is rejected by Aristotle, it is nevertheless favored by Cicero in Book 6 of the Republic, where the elder Scipio Africanus, responding to the younger who had asked him, "What is this sound, so great and so sweet, that fills my ears?" says, "This is that which, joined by unequal intervals yet distinguished by shared proportion, is made by the pushing and moving of these circles. Tempering the acute with the grave, it produces various concords. For such great movements cannot be made in silence, and Nature dictates that the extremes on one side sound gravely, and on the other acutely." For which reason, that highest course of the starry heaven, whose revolution is swifter, moves with an acute and stronger sound, and this lunar and lowest one with a very grave sound. This Tullius i.e., Cicero says, following the opinion of Plato, who, to show that harmony arises from such revolution, imagines that a Siren sits upon each sphere. For "Siren" means nothing other than "Singer to God." And similarly, Hesiod in his Theogony, hinting at this same thing, called Urania Heavenly the eighth Muse, who is appropriate to the eighth sphere, from Uranos, the name by which the Greeks call the Heaven. And to show that the ninth sphere was that which gave birth to the great and concordant unity of sounds, he named it Calliope Beautiful-voiced, which comes to signify "of Excellent voice," wishing to show by this the harmony that results from all those other spheres, as is seen hinted at by the Poet when he said:

original: "Vos o Calliope precor aspirare canenti;"
I pray to you, O Calliope, to inspire me as I sing;

invoking only Calliope in the plural number, as the principal one, and as that at whose will alone all the others move and turn. The ancients held this opinion so strongly to be true that in their sacrifices they used musical instruments and sang certain Hymns composed of sonorous verses, which contained two parts, one of which they named strophe turning/rotation and the other antistrophe counter-turning, to show the different turns made by the celestial spheres. For by one they understood the motion that the sphere of the fixed stars makes from East to West, and by the other the different movements that the other spheres of the planets make, proceeding in the opposite direction, from West to East. With such instruments, they also accompanied the bodies of their dead to burial, for they were of the opinion that after death, souls returned to the origin of the sweetness of Music, that is, to heaven. The Hebrews once observed this custom in the death of their relatives, of which we have very clear testimony in the Gospel, where the resurrection of the daughter of the prince of the Synagogue is described; musical instruments were there, and our Lord commanded those who played them to play no more. They did this (as Ambrose says) to observe the custom of their ancestors, who in such a way invited the bystanders to weep with them. Many also held the opinion that in this life every soul was overcome by Music, and that even though it was locked in the bodily prison, remembering and being conscious of the music of the heavens, it would forget every harsh and tiresome toil. But if this seems strange, we have the testimony of the Sacred scriptures for the harmony of the heavens, where the Lord speaks to Job, saying: "Who will narrate the reasons or voices of the Heavens? And who will make their concord sleep?" And if I were asked why such a great and sweet sound is not heard by us, I would know how to answer nothing other than what Cicero says in the place cited above: that our ears, filled with such harmony, are deaf, just as happens, for example, to the inhabitants of those places where the Nile plunges from very high mountains, called Catadupa; they, because of the greatness of the roar, lack the sense of hearing. Or that just as our eye cannot fix its gaze on the light of the Sun, our own light being overcome by its rays, so our ears cannot comprehend the sweetness of the celestial harmony because of its excellence and greatness. But every reason persuades us to believe, at least, that the world is composed with harmony, if only because...