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"Therefore he (God) laid the inferior things beneath the superior, as an egg to be hatched under a hen, or as a woman to be made fruitful by a man. Into which he from the beginning inserted certain seminal reasons, that they might, taking their opportunities, multiply themselves, as I may say, with a perpetual fertility and offspring. But God wrought out his compacted being of the world by certain harmony and musical proportion allied to one another, that which are in the superior world are in the inferior also, but in a terrestrial manner: that which likeness are in the inferiors, may also be seen in the superiors, in a celestial manner indeed, and according to the cause." - Marsilio Ficcino
The associations of music with the heavens goes back at least as far as the notion of the music of the spheres, associated with Pythagoras via Plato. Closer to the period in question Ficino – alleged author of the above quoted alchemical text – used music and song in his form of celestial magic. Once more, music is a bridge between the celestial and earthly spheres. It’s apparent from the Khunrath engraving that the use of music is not just an analogy for the astrological conditions of alchemy (itself called astronomia inferior), but also effects the soul of the alchemist (hence the Ficinian quote relating to music relieving melancholic humours). The matter, the heavens, and God are all intimately connected with the alchemist, his body, mind and soul.
To many theorists, musicians and writers with Neoplatonic inclinations the moral and emotional characters of the eight church modes were often associated with the heavenly spheres, as were the harmonic conventions of the monochord . There was therefore a strong philosophical link between music and the heavens until developments in music and astronomy (among others) caused a schism which would lead later commentators such as Antoine Fabre D’Olivet (1767-1825) to speculate that the magical powers and moral natures ascribed to music by the ancients had been lost as a result of – for example – equal temperament turning.
The limitations of traditional musical theory and notation were unable to accommodate the changing fashions and scientific advances of the late Renaissance and Baroque. In this regard I remember a passage in Jamie James’ brilliant The Music of the Spheres that discussed the compositional possibilities offered by Fludd’s Temple of Music (illustrated above), stating that – when one considers that audiences of the time were becoming familiar with increased chromaticism, for example in the music of John Dowland and the opportunities for modulation afforded by new systems of temperament – the music on offer by Fludd must have been about as exciting as auntie’s bloomers.
However, to a dyed-in-the-wool Hermeticist it would seem to me that such novelties would likely not matter: for here, in these well-worn modes and intervals there was something of the eternal nature of the universe: a cosmic sympathy beyond even the anguish of love that the chromatic twist of the lachrimae motif (for example) so powerfully evokes.
Even the great exemplar of astronomical progressiveness, Johannes Kepler, adhered to a Pythagorean vision of the universe. Despite defending Copernicus, the Neopythagorean Kepler redefined celestial harmony in his model of a solar system in which the Platonic solids were nested within the celestial spheres. Furthermore, to Kepler the music of the spheres were not sustained tones, but glissandi.
"The composer and performer are the alchemists who help to transmute the Earth by making its substance and souls resonate with echoes of the heavenly music. In so doing, these earthly echoes also become audible in Heaven, and the gulf between the two thereby closes by another hairsbreadth. This is the accomplishment of the Great Work of musical alchemy which, like alchemy proper, aims toward the redemption of all Nature as well as to the reunion of Man with his higher self." - Joscelyn Godwin*
Passages from and read more @ https://larkfall.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/weights-and-measures-alchemy-harmony-geomancy-and-music/
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