Music Of The Spheres Research Articles

The Aesthetic Exploration and Ideological Implication of Mozart’ s “Jupiter” Symphony

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), one of greatest Austrian musicians who was undisputedly considered as the supramundane genius in the history of Western classical music. Mozart’s symphony No. 41 “Jupiter” is his last symphony. This article elaborates that “Jupiter” symphony not only has innovation and superior consciousness, but also has cosmological characteristic through example illustrations and analysis of application of counterpoint or polyphonic writing in the last movement of “Jupiter” symphony. Its composition technique that pursues symmetrical sequence is close to Boethius’s definition of Musica Mundana that it contains numeral, the order, and the supreme harmony of the heaven.

The philosophy of music of Pythagoras

The article reproduces the image of the great thinker Pythagoras - one of the most popular scientists and the most mysterious personality, the philosopher. Pythagoras created the brightest and most modern "religion": he nurtured in humanity a belief in the power of reason, the belief that the key to the mysteries of the worldview is mathematics. Music for Pythagoras became not only a means of inspiration but also a subject of scientific research, it was in music that Pythagoras found direct proof of his statement: "Everything is a number." 2,500 years ago, Pythagoras guided people on the path of triumph of the Mind. The whole world, Pythagoras argued, is a harmonious number. And these numbers form the ratio as well as the intervals between different degrees of scale. From time immemorial, numbers seemed to people to be something mysterious. Any object could be seen. The number cannot be touched and, at the same time, numbers really exist, because all objects can be counted... Pythagoras and his followers believed that everything in nature is measured, everything is subject to numbers, and to know the world means to know the numbers that control them. If before Pythagoras, music was understood magically and understood as the embodiment of the forces of nature, used mainly in ritual and religious rites, it is Pythagoras who became the progenitor of the mathematization of the musical phenomenon. The main grain of Pythagorean world harmony is the idea of ​​harmony in a mathematically ordered whole. Pythagoras came to this idea when he discovered that the basic harmonic intervals: octave, pure fifth and pure fourth - occur when the lengths of the strings are 2:1, 3:2 and 4:3. Drawing analogies between the orderliness of the material world and the orderly mathematical relationship in music, he suggested that each planet in its rotation around the Earth emits a tone of a certain height, passing through the clean upper air - the ether. All the celestial sounds of all the planets, merging, form what is called "harmony of the spheres" or "music of the spheres." The laws of music and mathematics are the basic essence of natural existence, according to which the universe is not only built, but also moves and develops.The teachings of Pythagoras showed the unity of everything in the set, and the main purpose of man was expressed in the fact that through self-development man must achieve a connection with the cosmos.

Music Theory's Other Nature: Reflections on Gaia, Humans, and Music in the Anthropocene

The new historical paradigm ushered in by the Anthropocene offers a timely and urgent opportunity to rethink the relationship of humans and nature. Bruno Latour's take on the Gaia hypothesis, which rejects the traditional subject/object divide, shows how the human can be inscribed into the work of music theory. This turn toward Latour's Actor-Network Theory, which erases the categorical difference between human and nonhuman agents, now dressed up in cosmic garb under the banner of the Gaia hypothesis, appears to be distant from traditional music-theoretical concerns, but the connection is in fact less far-fetched than it seems. J. G. Kastner's music theory, taking its cue from the sound of the Aeolian harp, serves as a test case here: the Aeolian harp, played by wind directly, had long served as a Romantic image of the superhuman forces of nature, but Kastner argues that the Aeolian network only becomes complete in human ears. By unraveling the various instances and agencies of Kastner's theory, this article charts a novel approach to music and sound that sidesteps the conceptual problems in which the nineteenth-century mainstream habitually gets entangled. Kastner's work is based on a fundamental crisis in the conception of sound, after the invention of the mechanical siren (1819) tore down any certainties about the categorical distinction between noise and musical sound. Seeking to rebuild the understanding of sound from the ground up, Kastner leaves no stone unturned, from the obsolete Pythagorean tradition of musica mundana to travelers’ reports about curious sonic environmental phenomena from distant parts of the world. Where the old mechanistic paradigm was built on a “physical music” (and a static “sound of nature” based on the harmonic series), Kastner proposes a new “chemical music” that is based on the dynamic, ever-changing sonority of the Aeolian harp. This chemical music does not (yet) exist, but Kastner gives us some clues about its features, especially in his transcription/simulation of the sound of the Aeolian harp scored for double symphony orchestra. Kastner's “chemical music” finally closes the music-theoretical network that he builds around his new conception of the supernatural sound of the Aeolian harp and its human and nonhuman agents.

Early (Avant-garde) Symphonies by Valentin Silvestrov As a Sound Universe

"In the article under consideration are the ways of symphony genre transformation in the early works of Valentin Silvestrov (Ukraine). For the first time, the First, Second, Third, and Fourth symphonies by the genius composers of the 20th century are analyzed as a certain stylistic system. These compositions are endowed with the features of avant-garde poetics, and as a subject of musicological reflection, they are associated with a rethinking of the semantic paradigm of the genre. V. Silvestrov's early symphonies stand out from the classical practice of European symphonies. Scientific awareness of their phenomenal nature necessitated a methodological choice aimed at the most accurate identification of the philosophical concept of the new sound universum of V. Silvestrov's music. Deep correlation of the image of a human being as a factor of the symphony poetics (the influence of philosophical concepts of human ontology in the 20th century with the transformation of the genre canon) is considered. This refers to the nonmusical dimension of the genre semantics. The study of V. Silvestrov's early symphonies reveal a new philosophy of music through gradual movement – modulation: from the neo-baroque First Symphony and ""cosmic pastorals"" Musica Mundana of the Second Symphony through the history anthropologisation in the Third Symphony ""Eschatology"" to the monodrama Musica Humana in the Fourth Symphony. The dichotomy of Musica Mundana – Musica Humana is not accidental: in V. Silvestrov's creative method, remains relevant, which is confirmed by the dramaturgy of his latest work – the Ninth symphony (2019). Keywords: V. Silvestrov's early symphonies, evolution of style, worldview, Musica Mundana, monodrama. "

Cosmology and the Renaissance at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: Alexander Blok’s “Worlds”

The article is an extract from a collaborative study of the reception of heliocentrism at the turn of the twentieth century. Popular interest in astronomy and its history was an essential part of the intellectual culture of that time. From this perspective, the authors consider Alexander Blok’s poem “Worlds fly, years fly. Empty…” (1912). Blok implicitly contrasts the fixed and closed cosmos of antiquity and the Middle Ages with the multitude of worlds that fly through endless, dark and empty space at monstrous speed. The rotating earth is likened to a whirring top, which reminds one a contrario of the former harmony of the spheres. The commentary offered in the article provides a partial reconstruction of paths in the intellectual history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that are still mostly unexplored and involved with widespread views on the Renaissance and modern cosmology.

MUSIC IN DANTE'S DIVINE COMEDY: To the 700th Anniversary of the Memory

The article examines the famous literary and artistic work of the Renaissance poet Dante Alighieri "Divine Comedy". In the Comedy a special place is occupied by the musical content, which enriches the literary images of the afterlife. Many works of Western researchers pay attention to the "philosophy of music" of Dante's work. The opinions of various scholars who single out the following musical references are considered: songs and musical instruments, liturgical sung texts and psalms, the presence of monophonic and polyphonic sounds, the reflection of the Boethian principles: musica mundana, humana, instrumentalis and assumptions about the poet's own vision of the development of music. Authors saw the relation with words used to designate the music itself. They have focused on moments of structural and literary relations in these sacred texts respect to each other, analysed the "singing" relationship between heroes of Comedy. The considered a set of key cases resonates with music and sound: infernal dissonance, cacophony emphasizes the immorality Inferno; the middle part Purgatorio, is the central part of Comedy is the musical bridge between the “anti-music” of Inferno and the divine music of Paradiso. The music running these canticas throughout psalms and hymns voiced by choirs of souls. Recent scholarship on the literary aspects and musicology enables us as one level up of the meaning of Comedy. This philosophical and metaphysical aspects of Dante`s thought maybe give us information about music life in 14th century. Interesting material is supplemented by quotations from the Ukrainian translation of Maxim Strikha, which preserves the poetics of speech and sound means by which Dante tried to portray his visions.

Chillida y la poesía

Para Chillida la palabra poesía tiene ante todo un sentido genésico, y recurre a ella precisamente al tratar de la creación: «¿No son la construcción y la poesía componentes esenciales de todas las artes?» Si para el físico Minkowski, cuando el poeta habla «devuelve al ser la energía de un origen» (algo intangible relacionado con el tiempo), la construcción (vinculada al espacio) nos acerca al decir de Heidegger: «Ser obra es establecer un mundo». De ahí que construcción y poesía abarquen juntas ambas cosas. Chillida no tarda en entrar en contacto con Heidegger y hace con él un intenso libro titulado El arte y el espacio, pero pronto hace también un homenaje al poeta Jorge Guillén, seducido por su verso: «Lo profundo es el aire». Por otra parte, estando la poesía vinculada a la música, donde, dice Walter Pater, «no se distingue entre materia y forma», Chillida se acerca también a ella. Como consecuencia, junto a su homenaje a San Juan de la Cruz, hallamos el dedicado a Juan Sebastián Bach. Así sus obras pueden titularse: Rumor de límites, Espacios sonoros, Música de las esferas, Vibraciones…

Harmony of the spheres: musical elements of couple communication

Music is the language of the emotions and musical elements of speech are the way in which emotional states are expressed. This article amplifies the multi-modal musical spectrum of psychotherapy with couples, families, and individuals. Musical qualities of communication underlie myriad forms of unconscious and conscious communication in the therapeutic setting, whether concerning the analytic couple of individual therapy, the various dyads and triads of couple therapy, or the multiple intersecting groupings involved in family therapy. When couples engage in states of intersubjective intimacy, their dialogue features a melodious form of speech featuring improvised reciprocal imitation, theme, and variation. When a couple have been triggered into an interlocking traumatic scene, harmony is replaced with cacophony. Awareness of the acoustic features of different emotional states such as depression, anger, and anxiety, as well as specific features of the activation of an interlocking traumatic scene, helps alert therapists that such a shift has taken place. In turn, this will help tune appropriate therapeutic responses.

«Музыка сфер»: регламент коронационного пира Елизаветы Тюдор

«Музыка сфер»: регламент коронационного пира Елизаветы Тюдор

The Pythagorean Shift In The Ottoman Musical Writings

It has been discussed throughout history whether we can examine and explain music autonomously or heteronomously. A current example of this is the debate that took place in recent years in Istanbul around the usage of maqam Nihavend in call to prayers (ezan). Some of the musicians and reciters (müezzin) objected to this usage of Nihavend on the grounds of its supposed secularity rather than examining its autonomous qualities. This article aims to discuss the autonomous-heteronomous approaches in Ottoman music through thirteen different musical writings, from Yusuf Kırşehri’s Risale-i Musiki (1411) to Haşim Bey’s Mecmua (1853). Early Ottomans and the Muslim philosophers before them, were greatly aware of the Pythagorean doctrines such as ethos and the Harmony of the Spheres, in which the music is studied heteronomously. However, an opposite line to Pythagoreanism, Aristoxenianism had also immense influence on the musical writings of Muslim philosophers and the early Ottomans. With the rise of Turkish musical writings in the 15th century, there was a shift from the autonomous approach of Aristoxenianism. The argument of this article is that this shift allowed the Pythagoreanism to dominate the musical thought in the following centuries and even today. This was not a success of the heteronomous approach of Pythagoreanism but the result of the loss of connection with the Aristoxenian tradition.

Music As Translation. Musical Motifs in Liebert’s Poetry

This article is devoted to analyses of musical motifs in poetry by a Polish author Jerzy Liebert (1901–1934). Two main kinds of metaphorically understood music can be distinguished in his work: the earthly, referring to human fi niteness, and the transcendental, which is the divine music of God. In the investigation of this problem, Boethian typology of music (musica mundana, musica instrumentalis, musica humana) is engaged. The results of these analyses contribute to the understanding of how the human condition confronts the perfect nature of the Creator in Liebert’s poetry. The article argues that musical motifs seem to be yet another expression of this problem, ubiquitous in the poet’s work; thus, they are essential to its correct interpretation.

Music, mystique and Shakespeare’s sonnets

This is an English version of a paper that has been published in the Russian journal, Ideas and Ideals (2019, pp. 11-30). Shakespeares Sonnets (1609) contains several rhyming patterns that were regarded at the time as ‘anomalies’. In a list of ‘Rules’ for poetry published in 1585, the very first prohibition laid down by King James VI of Scotland was that a syllable should never be rhymed with itself. In 1603 James VI of Scotland became James I of England. And yet, in Shakespeare’s sonnets, the very first of King James’s prohibitions is broken rarely, but repeatedly. If Shakespeare’s successive sonnets are aligned with the successive notes in musical scales for the canonical series of the Renaissance ‘modes’, then the locations of Shakespeare’s rhyme-anomalies coincide reliably with the locations of the notes that are significantly discordant with the tonic according to a musical theory that was published in 1619 by the astronomer Johannes Kepler. Kepler’s master-work The Harmony of the World (1619) was dedicated to King James I of England. This work opens with a Dedication to King James, in which King James’s celebrated political successes were credited to his understanding of the ‘celestial harmonies’. It is argued here that Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence constitutes a ‘microcosm’ that formally echoes Kepler’s theory of the ‘macrocosm’ and ‘the harmony of the spheres’. If Shakespeare could somehow have brought the formal patterning in this ‘microcosm’ to the attention of potential patrons in the Jacobean Court, then he could reasonably have hoped that this might curry favour with those among them who shared ‘Platonic’ interests like those of Kepler.

Музыка, мистика и сонеты Шекспира

This is an English version of a paper that has been published in the Russian journal, Ideas and Ideals (2019, pp. 11-30). Shakespeares Sonnets (1609) contains several rhyming patterns that were regarded at the time as ‘anomalies’. In a list of ‘Rules’ for poetry published in 1585, the very first prohibition laid down by King James VI of Scotland was that a syllable should never be rhymed with itself. In 1603 James VI of Scotland became James I of England. And yet, in Shakespeare’s sonnets, the very first of King James’s prohibitions is broken rarely, but repeatedly. If Shakespeare’s successive sonnets are aligned with the successive notes in musical scales for the canonical series of the Renaissance ‘modes’, then the locations of Shakespeare’s rhyme-anomalies coincide reliably with the locations of the notes that are significantly discordant with the tonic according to a musical theory that was published in 1619 by the astronomer Johannes Kepler. Kepler’s master-work The Harmony of the World (1619) was dedicated to King James I of England. This work opens with a Dedication to King James, in which King James’s celebrated political successes were credited to his understanding of the ‘celestial harmonies’. It is argued here that Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence constitutes a ‘microcosm’ that formally echoes Kepler’s theory of the ‘macrocosm’ and ‘the harmony of the spheres’. If Shakespeare could somehow have brought the formal patterning in this ‘microcosm’ to the attention of potential patrons in the Jacobean Court, then he could reasonably have hoped that this might curry favour with those among them who shared ‘Platonic’ interests like those of Kepler.

Hearing Voices: Aurality and New Spanish Sound Culture in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz by Sarah Finley

Reviewed by: Hearing Voices: Aurality and New Spanish Sound Culture in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz by Sarah Finley Colleen R. Baade HEARING VOICES: AURALITY AND NEW SPANISH SOUND CULTURE IN SOR JUANA INÉS DE LA CRUZ, by Sarah Finley. New Hispanisms. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019. 252 pp. $60.00 cloth; $60.00 paper; $60.00 ebook. Sarah Finley’s Hearing Voices: Aurality and New Spanish Sound Culture in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz makes a noteworthy contribution to our understanding of the various ways in which sound is manifest in the works of Mexico’s celebrated seventeenth-century nun poet, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Finley’s exploration of Sor Juana’s aurality goes beyond interpretation of music metaphor and beyond explication of the poet’s engagement with the music culture of her time to include considerations of nonmusical sound disciplines such as the musical-rhetorical doctrine of musica poetica—which draws analogies between the composition of music and the composition of oratory or poetry—and the alignment of music, painting, and poetry in Sor Juana’s literary output. In Finley’s own words, her approach “draws out previously marginalized components of Sor Juana’s acoustical inheritance and results in new interpretations that attend to sonority’s intersections with significant themes in [Sor Juana’s] writing, including gender, agency, and authority” (p. 2). The first chapter, “Harmony,” examines representations of political order in Sor Juana’s occasional works and shows how in works such as loa 374 (1689; a loa is a form of allegorical play), the poet relies heavily upon the prevailing early modern understanding of the ancient philosophical concept of the music or harmony of the spheres. Finley affirms the importance of what she calls “Sor Juana’s Pythagoreanism”—that is, Sor Juana’s apparent adherence to the philosophical idea that the same mathematical ratios that are produced by musical intervals also govern the movement of the celestial bodies—in her compelling analysis of loa 384 (1692) (p. 43). Chapter two, “Resonance,” confirms Sor Juana’s familiarity with the writings of the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher, convincingly demonstrating that his Musurgia universalis (1650; Universal musical art) and Phonurgia nova (1673; New mode of sound production) “were fundamental to Sor Juana’s acousticopoetic imagination” (p. 61). Finley’s reading of redondilla 87 (1689) highlights the ways in which the poem “exploits a lexicon shared by music and poetry to describe a painting” by means of a polysemic appeal to the senses of both sight and hearing (p. 74). The subsequent chapters, “Sound,” “Echo,” and “Silence,” assess ways in which such diverse Sorjuanian works as the villancicos for the Feast of the Assumption (1677) and El divino Narcisco (1690; Divine narcissus), an allegorical auto sacramental (a kind of religious theater specific to Spain), constitute defenses of female intellect and agency. A discussion of [End Page 451] the representation of literal music-making in Sor Juana’s villancicos—for example, the references to military bands in the fourth villancico from the Assumption cycle—will be of particular interest to musicologist readers. The book’s penultimate chapter, “Silence,” offers new insights into the meanings of soundlessness by considering the absence of sound in Sor Juana’s writings through the lens of the Baroque concept of horror vacui (fear of empty space). Finley argues persuasively that in works like Primero sueño (1692; First dream) and Respuesta a sor Filotea (written 1691, published 1700; Reply to Sor Philotea), Sor Juana reimagines the mechanisms of silencing and censoring “as alternative modes that challenged masculine dominance” (p. 183). Finally, the book’s “Coda” reveals “sound’s importance for conceptualizing and reimagining knowledge, power, and the (female) self’s place in the world” in the auditory imagery of Primer sueño (p. 186). To write in the field of sound studies is to undertake an interdisciplinary enterprise that brings with it the challenge of possessing expertise in multiple fields. This book rises admirably to the task on multiple counts; however, the musicologist reader may note an occasional lack of familiarity with certain terminology or an apparent unawareness of some aspects of music history. For example, the...

Poetic Judgment and the Music of the Spheres

Poetic Judgment and the Music of the Spheres

'Harmony of the spheres' in the musical 'vitrage' of 'the thirteen-star flower of Cassiopeia': Micro- and macro-manipulation with time and space

This paper deals with an analysis of the phantasy for orchestra Trinaestozvezdani cvet Kasiopeje [The Thirteen-star Flower of Cassiopeia] by Vladimir Trmčić (1983). Special attention is paid to the motivic analysis of the work and general aesthetical premises of the program, which influenced the formation of the musical flow. The static nature, sustained tones and micropolyphony enable the composer to experiment with time, space, intervals, timbres, resulting in music with an immanent logic guided by the movement of energy masses.

Cosmic vibrations

This paper argues that the medieval conception of musica mundana and musica humana, the idea that the universe and man are musically constructed, had an afterlife in the Enlightenment. The musical paradigm essentially dropped out of use in the seventeenth century, and was replaced by versions of Cartesian mechanism. However, by focusing on the ideas of certain British natural philosophers I show how they absorbed aspects of the harmonia mundi tradition, especially the theory that the universe is filled with a vibrating ether or spirit that also serves as the connection between body and soul.

Peculiar Attunements: Comic Opera and Enlightenment Mimesis

Peculiar Attunements: Comic Opera and Enlightenment Mimesis

Images of Time and Timelessness: A Musical Reading of Death in Venice

This essay is based on an old, well-known question in aesthetics: how to represent time in its fleetingness without halting, appropriating, objectifying, or transcending it? The question inspires a reading of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice as the account of a transformation in which a wish to overcome time turns into the erotic desire of being delivered to time. As such, the story reflects the tension between two competing views of music: music as an Apollonian play of time-transcending, auditory forms, and music as the Dionysian art in time. A phenomenological reading of Luchino Visconti's adaptation of the novella complicates this plainly dualistic opposition. The essay traces how the aesthetic suspension of time is contrasted with, but also depends on, the spectator's real-time experience. Similarly, the two classical, competing views of music stand in a complex dialectical relation to each other and reflect our existential relation to time. Like the harmony of the spheres, the time that is not our time--time in general--is excluded from immediate sensory perception. Yet, as it is filled with things, episodes, and actions, we can abstractly distinguish between its worldly effects and time as the cause that transcends experience. Still, it is hard to conceive of time in itself without imaginatively turning it into an abstract state of timelessness, a static, eternal realm of time. To be sure, many great thinkers have questioned the "out-thereness" of time and have regarded it, rather, as a universal post rem or a priori form of intuition. Even within the confines of human experience time causes philosophical puzzlement. It dictates our whole lives, imposes its monomaniac regime of irreversibility on everything it touches, but eludes our grasp whenever we try to engage in it, in and of itself. At first sight, its intangibility may facilitate a common desire to bracket time or our consciousness of it. Who has never longed for a world in which the persons and things we love simply stay the way they are? On the other hand, we are also obsessed with time, as we love punctuality and as we delight in races against the clock. The obsession with exact time can easily be exposed, however, as yet another attempt to control its unceasing and unforgiving movement. It is as if time plays with us, being both present and absent, not only in and to our experience but even in our thoughts. Time does not just fly--it plays hide-and-seek. In and Out of Time In its play of presence and absence, the experience of time is closely related to the fear of death. To appease this fear, it is often said that death needs to be given a face. Following Emmanuel Levinas and Philippe Aries, Rudi Visker argues that naming or representing death symbolically separates it from life and fends it off as a heterogeneous element. The correct way to exorcize the dead and keep them from haunting the living consists neither in explaining death philosophically nor in calculating its medical probability. To be a successful image of death, not even resemblance is needed. All that is required is for us to put it boldly in its proper place--on the shelf--thereby isolating it from life (Visker 2007, 140-54). Similarly, time can be represented symbolically. Successful images of time offer a handle on its otherwise uncontrollable fleetingness; by bringing it under our explicit attention and making it graspable to the senses they enable us to relate to time and vicariously help us deal with life's transience. The question, however, is what kind of time such images relate us to. When time is placed "out there," is it not transfigured into something else--a timeless object--just like symbols of death are purported to do? To what extent, then, is it still an image of time? Music--not the celestial, inaudible music of the spheres but our own earthly music--has often been considered to be the perfect medium to represent time. According to Arthur Schopenhauer, however, music offers an escape from the threat of time by taking us out of it. …

The Music of the Spheres: from Rūmī’s Mathnawī

The Music of the Spheres: from Rūmī’s Mathnawī