Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to survey a wide and ancient tradition in order to indicate fruitful lines of research within it. This tradition, namely the Harmony of the Spheres, the musica mundana of Boethius, has hitherto been chiefly studied as a literary one, a complex of metaphors and topoi, very thoroughly and brilliantly covered by James Hutton in a long article entitled, too modestly, “Some English Poems in Praise of Music.”1 I want now to try and see when, where and in what ways musica mundana has had some importance outside literature, some reality as a part of, or influence on the following fields: ordinary music, astronomy and cosmology, astrology and magic, architecture, mathematics and early modern science.
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