“Musician’s Costume,” from Nicholas de Larmessin, Les Costumes grotesques et les métiers (late 17th century).

August 01, 2011, 1:45pm

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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

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Johannes Kepler, Willie Ruff, and John Rodgers: “The Planets from Mercury Outward”

From the album The Harmony of the World: A Realization for the Ear of Johannes Kepler’s Data from Harmonices Mundi (1619)

Most famous for his “first law” declaring that the orbit of planets around the sun traced ellipses, and not circles, as was previously believed, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) is not usually thought of in connection to music.  But in his 1619 book Harmonices Mundi (The Harmony of the Worlds), Kepler gave the ancient Pythagorean and Platonic notion of the “music of the spheres” a new and precisely empirical formulation.  He compared the angular velocity of the planets at perihelion and aphelion (the orbital points closest to and furthest from the sun), and expressed the relationship between these speeds as musical intervals:

(The interval in question is between the outermost notes of each scale; the inner notes are filled in as a formality.)

Kepler’s calculation of the “music of the spheres” was remarkable for a number of reasons.  First, as explained in Joscelyn Godwin’s excellent book Harmonies of Heaven and Earth, the intervals are calculated not in relation to the Earth, but rather, in accordance with the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, from the auditory perspective of the sun.  Second, although Kepler’s notation could not indicate it, he imagined their tonal ranges as being continuously sounded in the manner of a glissando.  Finally, Kepler’s cosmic music is explicitly polyphonic.  Previous theories were constrained by conventional understandings of what was musically acceptable: Aristotle, for example, rejected the notion that each planet simultaneously sounded the note of a scale, for the result would be cacophony.  But Kepler saw no reason to believe that the music of the spheres would cleave neatly to human notions of musical beauty.  He believed, with his medieval predecessor John Scotus Eriugena, that “all the musical consonances can be made by the eight celestial sounds, not just in the three genera (diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic), but even in others beyond the conception of mortals.”

Because the time-scale of these planetary motions is exceedingly vast (Saturn’s trip up and down a major third requires no less than 30 years), things have to be accelerated to make these harmonies audible to humans. This is what has been done in this exceptional recording made by Willie Ruff and John Rodgers.  The music you are hearing introduces the planets one by one: first Mercury, high and fast, with its eccentric orbit covering a large interval of a minor 10th; then, both in the treble register, Venus and Earth, whose nearly circular orbits create tones that barely change—Venus oscillates within a quarter-tone, Earth a semitone.  Next enters Mars in the alto range, with a fairly wide ambitus traversed in 10 second cycles. Quite a bit lower, Jupiter sounds its stentorian baritone, spanning a minor third. Finally comes Saturn, a growling bass about an octave below Jupiter.  Its range is a major third.

The outer planets, unknown in Kepler’s time, are represented by rhythmic impulses instead of musical tones: Uranus vacillates between a rapid 9 and 10 pulses per second, Neptune keeps a near-constant rate of 5 per second, and Pluto enters with a slow but irregular beat, which is the last to be heard after all the other voices drop out.

For a similarly inspired piece, check out Greg Fox’s Carmen of the Spheres (2006), which measures the orbital period of each of the planets in seconds, then divides that figure by two (using the principle of octave equivalence) again and again until it represents a frequency within the audible spectrum for humans.  A similar procedure is used to determine the duration of the pitches.  Interesting music, though Mr. Fox’s website is unforgivable.

March 06, 2010, 3:23pm