The Music of the Spheres: Music, Science, and the Natural Order of the Universe

A unique history of Western science speculates that from Pythagoras to the fifteenth century, scientists understood science musically, but that modernism has silenced Pythagoras's "music of the spheres."

From Pythagoras onward, music was perceived as a mirror of cosmic harmony and of the Supreme Intelligence believed to pervade the universe. But 19th-century Romantic composers, in James's view, were deaf to the music of the spheres, and created instead an aberrant music of exaggerated emotional appeal. James, who writes on science and music for Discover and Connoisseur, contends that the works of Bach, Mozart, Schubert and Schonberg embody a belief in a sublime cosmic order that Beethoven overturned. This bold, pathbreaking history explains how the ancient tradition of music as a branch of divine science has found support from Plato through Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton (an alchemist and self-professed Pythagorean) to Galileo, Freemasonry and the esoteric experiments of today's avant-garde composers. A provocative, engaging reassessment of the Western musical tradition and its relation to science. Illustrated.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Music in relation to science is a theme that James has explored in popular articles (Discover, etc.). Here, he contends that, until the 19th century, music embodied the classic ideals of an ordered universe--having harmonies among the music of the spheres (musica mundana), the music of the human organism (musica humana), and ordinary music-making (musica instrumentalis). In parallel, science was a noble pursuit aimed at establishing the natural order of things (embodied, for example, in the Great Chain of Being). James cites Pythagoras as the prime begetter of these ideas. The sixth-century Greek thinker espoused a philosophy of the interrelatedness of all things and a system of dualities (one/many; odd/even; limited/unlimited, etc.) that led to his elaborate numerology. Pythagoras is also credited with the discovery of the ratios (1/2, 2/3, 3/4...) that define the harmonic intervals of the scale: the octave, the major fifth, the fourth, etc. The tradition of cosmic harmonies continued through Plato, Plotinus, the Christian mystics, and the Hermetic cults, with James reminding us of the links that joined astronomy/astrology and science/alchemy in the works of Kepler and Newton. In the 19th century came what James regards as the great anomaly in music history: Romanticism, with its earthy expression of human passions. Similarly, science divorced itself from lofty ideals to be measured on the human scale. Paradoxically, music and science became pursuits of an elite--a tradition that has continued to the present, albeit with a reaction to Romanticism in atonality, aleatory music, and other experiments. Ours is not a happy time, James notes rather sadly, saying that perhaps we need to be reinfused with cosmic consciousness....or to seek it outside the concert hall. Doubtless, experts will accuse the author of overstatement and will find exceptions and countercurrents; but, overall, his discussion is lively and stimulating. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The Music of the Spheres is a truly interdisciplinary book, as much science as music. The book begins with Pythagoras, who some consider both the first scientist and one of the first to study music in a disciplined fashion. Pythagoras described the heavens as seven spheres, one nestled in the next, each supporting a known planet, with the sun as the innermost sphere. This perfect system both produced and was music; the music of the spheres was celestial harmony. Pythagoras used mathematical principles to study nature, the heavens, and music, showing that they could be studied in the same way. Science writer James traces the development of science and music from antiquity through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance (including Kepler's well-described cosmology), and the present. He discusses how developments in music and science paralleled one another, overlapped, and in general reflected the position of humanity in the universe. While this book is aimed at general audiences, some familiarity with the history of music is helpful. For interdisciplinary collections.
- Eric D. Albright, Galter Health Sciences Lib., Northwestern Univ., Chicago
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.