[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Michael Maier: “Fuga V: Appone mulieri”

From the album Renaissance Music in Bohemia

Court physician of the illustrious Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, Michael Maier (1568-1622) was a man of universal and esoteric learning in the grand style of 17th-century Europe. Among his many intellectual affiliations, Maier was associated with the Rosicrucian movement, an esoteric society that first emerged in the early 17th century. His numerous writings employed various intrepid conceits intended to exercise the mind: in Lusius Serius (“A Serious Pastime”) a menagerie of animals submit their virtues to man’s judgment, whileViatorium is a guided tour of the (then) seven planets and their associated metallic elements.

In 1618, Maier published a remarkable book entitled Atalanta Fugiens (The Fleeing Atalanta), a treatise of alchemical wisdom that contains some rare examples of notated music composed under the spell of that arcane discipline. The book consists of 50 poetic epigrams conveying the arcane teachings of alchemical lore, each illustrated with a woodcut and accompanied by a short essay elaborating on its symbolic meaning. In addition, each of these allegorical poems was set to music in a three-voice composition written by Maier, who was an amateur musician.

Although Maier called his compositions “fugues,” we would now call them canons. The same cantus firmus reappears in each of the songs, in one of the three voices, while the other two follow each other in strict canonic imitation meant to illustrate the mythical pursuit of Atalanta by Hippomenes.

These compositions are among the few extant traces of notated music conceived in the context of alchemical knowledge. Their interest in the present lies largely in the remarkable way that text, image, and music are intertwined into a single, multidimensional experience in Maier’s book: a kind of multimedia avant la lettre. In the preface to his book, Maier explains the logic of his unorthodox presentation:

In order to have it, as it were, in a single view, and embrace these three objects of the more spiritual senses, namely of sight, hearing, and the intellect itself, so as to introduce to the soul that which is to be understood at one and the same time, we have joined Optics to Music and the sense to the intellect, that is, rarities for the sight and hearing with the chemical emblems that are proper to this science.

Parts of Atalanta Fugiens can be found on a number of albums, but the only complete recording of which I’m aware was released on a cassette tape in conjunction with the edition of Atalanta Fugiens edited by Josceyln Godwin (Magnum Opus Hermetic Sourceworks #22, published by Phanes Press in 1989). This exquisite interpretation of Maier’s music is by the Czech group Ars Cameralis, who recorded 10 of the 50 fugues.

Epigram V: To woman’s breast apply the chilly toad, / So that it drinks her milk, just like a child. / Then let it swell into a massive growth, / And let the woman sicken, and then die. / You make from this a noble medicine, / Which drives the poison from the human heart.

July 26, 2011, 9:30am