H

Harmony, Renaissance ordered by the same numerical proportions that

Conceptions of produce musical consonances, or harmonies.
The most powerful statement of this doctrine
Jacomien Prins was found in the realm of cosmology, where
Centre for the Study of the Renaissance/Institute the notion of the harmony of the spheres was
of Advanced Study, University of Warwick, IAS, used to designate the harmonious relationships
Millburn House, Coventry, UK between the planets governed by the propor-
tionate speeds of their orbits or by their mutual
distances. In the history of Western thought it
Abstract was not so much the meaning of the term
In music, “harmony” usually refers to two or “harmony” that changed, but the material to
more notes that simultaneously produce a which it was applied, resulting in ever-
pleasing sound. In ancient Greek music, how- changing explanations of the concept in differ-
ever, from which the concept and term origi- ent cultural contexts.
nate, “harmony” stands for a specific
combination or juxtaposition of dissimilar or
contrasting elements, for example, a higher and Heritage and Rupture with the Tradition
a lower note. By combining these disparate or
conflicting elements, a unity or harmony arises In the frontispiece of his Musurgia universalis
(discordia concors, i.e., harmonious discord). (1650), a classic in the tradition of the harmony
In a narrower sense, the Greek science of har- of the spheres, Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680)
monics refers to an extensively developed sys- introduces a scheme of world harmony
tem of rules that governs relations between representing a mixture of (neo)Pythagorean,
musical elements. These rules were intended (neo)Platonic, Jewish, and Christian elements,
to control consonance and dissonance, which which had crept into this age-old tradition by
are fundamental aspects of harmony. In a then (Fig. 1). It depicts a harmonious cosmos, in
broader sense, “harmony” was used to explain which planets and angels together are singing the
unity and relationships in all kinds of natural praises of the Creator. The triangle at the top with
and cultural phenomena by analogy with musi- an eye inside represents the Trinity, which is
cal consonances and their proportions. These surrounded by nine angelic choirs, each singing
explanations together constitute the various in four voices a 36-part canon by Romano
theories of world harmony that were based on Micheli, echoing the harmony inherent in all cre-
the Pythagorean-Platonic belief in a universe ation. The middle section is dominated by a globe
# Springer International Publishing AG 2017
M. Sgarbi (ed.), Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_228-2
2 Harmony, Renaissance Conceptions of

hand that he is the discoverer of the secret of the

numerical basis of musical harmony. This discov-
ery was based on a comparison of the pitches
made by hammers of different weights on an
anvil in a blacksmith’s forge. By pointing with
his right hand to his theorem about the mathemat-
ical law of triangles, Pythagoras illustrates here
that a harmonic master plan underpins the struc-
ture and operation of the whole universe (musica
mundana). The muse on the right may be Polymnia,
who appears surrounded by musical instruments of
various kinds. She personifies the view that through
the imitation of world harmony in earthly music
(musica instrumentalis) man is able to climb a
spiritual ladder (bottom right hand corner), which
will ultimately lead to knowledge of the perfect
harmony of God’s creation. This is the case because
microcosmic man (musica humana), just like the
macrocosm, is made in the image and likeness of
God (Genesis 1:27).
In contrast with many of his predecessors,
however, Kircher rejected the literal existence of
a music of the planetary spheres “for that which
the ancients believed about harmonious order –
that an audible harmony rose from the friction of
Harmony, Renaissance Conceptions of, Fig. 1 World the heavenly bodies – has been generally
harmony. Frontispiece to the first volume of Athanasius exploded in these most recent times; for neither
Kircher’s Musurgia universalis (Rome, 1650) (Reproduced
with kind permission of Glasgow University Library, the solidity of the heavens [i.e. the Aristotelian
Special Collections) crystalline spheres] nor the order of the planets
remains as the ancients disposed it” (Kircher
of the world, upon which “Musica” is seated, 1650, II, 376, trans. Haar 1961, 504). As an
holding the lyre of Apollo and the panpipes of admirer of Johannes Kepler, Kircher aimed at
Marsyas: two musical instruments whose ordered formulating his astronomical views not in super-
strings and pipes are often used as symbols for seded musical metaphors but in modern scientific
world harmony. The globe is encircled by the terms, which, to his mind, were fully compatible
zodiac, indicating that just like the angelic music with a Christian belief in the harmony of God’s
in the highest realm of the universe, the heavenly creation. The sources he quoted in illustration of
bodies of planets and stars make up a cosmic his view of world harmony include the classical
symphony. In this composition, the relationship treatment of the topic, as well as the most influen-
between the orbits of the six planets (Sun, Venus, tial Neoplatonic and Christian interpretations,
Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) is expressible in which will be discussed below.
terms of the whole tone and five consonances, Among these ancient Greek scholars, Plato
which together constitute a musical scale (tone (427–347 BCE) figures prominently as the first
9:8; third 5:4; fourth 4:3; fifth 3:2; sixth 5:3; and philosopher who formulated an all-encompassing
octave 2:1) without the dissonant musical inter- view of the harmony of the universe. He was
vals of the second and seventh. clearly inspired by early Pythagoreans, who had
In the bottom left hand corner of the page sits discovered that the sound of musical consonances
Pythagoras, who proudly points out with his left was expressible in numbers, and extrapolated
Harmony, Renaissance Conceptions of 3

from this that the whole universe was ordered by musical intervals with the spatial intervals
the same numerical proportions that determine between the planets. Within the two geometric
these consonances. In his commentary on Plato’s series arithmetic and harmonic means are placed,
Timaeus, the Renaissance philosopher Marsilio which create proportions of 3:2, 4:3, and (their
Ficino (1433–1499) credited Pythagoras with difference) 9:8. The proportion 4:3 (fourth) is
having discovered that the principal musical con- filled in with two proportions of 9:8 (tone) and
sonances result from the sounding of proportion- one of 256:243 (semitone). This results in a musi-
ate weights of hammers or lengths of a stretched cal scale, which laid the foundation for the Greek
string, so that within the series 1,2,3,4 (the num- science of harmonics, the tuning of which became
bers constituting the “first figure of numbers,” i.e., known as the Pythagorean or Timaean scale. Out
the Pythagorean tetractys) simple ratios produce of the invisible World-Soul material, the Demi-
the musical intervals of the octave (2:1), fifth urge then created the physical world, which was
(3:2), and fourth (4:3) (Walker 1958; Prins 2014, set into harmonious motion at the beginning of
55–67). The key to understanding the whole uni- time and governed by the Demiurge, like a musi-
verse lay for Plato and his commentators in these cian starting to play a musical instrument.
proportions, and particularly in the mathematical In the myth of Er (Republic, 617B4–7), more-
means found in multiples of the duple proportion over, Plato described the universe as a set of
(arithmetic mean = 2:3:4; geometric mean = 1:2:4; nestled concentric rings around a spindle on the
harmonic mean = 3:4:6). Scholars like Ficino surface of each of which a Siren sits singing.
based their world view on the discovery of musi- According to this view, the movement of the plan-
cal laws underpinning the whole world, in which etary orbits (represented by the concentric rings)
numbers were understood to be quantities with produces an audible harmonious sound that con-
spatial existence and symbolic value rather than sists of the single tones of the Sirens taken
abstractions. Ficino thus argued that Plato was together. In the numerous commentaries on the
right “that the duple and triple [proportions] and myth, this planetary harmony was often
all the other intervals which are described in the interpreted literally as the music of the spheres
first figure of numbers are found in the spheres” (Plato 1937, 87–89). In principle, this heavenly
(Ficino 1496, 74r, trans. Prins 2014, 54). music was audible to mortal human beings, but
In his Timaeus, as Cornford (Plato 1937, their souls and ears usually became completely
59–72) explains, Plato formulated a comprehen- deaf to it after incarnation in a human body. In the
sive Pythagorean view of the creation of the uni- commentary tradition, these two Platonic myths
verse by the laws of harmony. In the cosmogonic offered not only a description of the harmonic
myth included in the dialogue (at Timaeus 35 and structure of the world but also a normative philos-
36) a Demiurge creates a World-Soul, a model for ophy of life, in which listening to and making
the physical universe, which is realized through music were seen as means to retrieve the music
the use of Pythagorean proportions. The World- of the spheres. Ficino, for example, followed Plato
Soul is envisioned as a band of invisible matter in arguing that “man is born to contemplate heav-
marked with the double and triple proportions of enly phenomena or, rather, as far as it is in his
the geometric series, before being split and bent power, to imitate the heavenly Mover himself.
into circles that represent the structure of the plan- And what Plato had said about the sense of seeing
etary system, which resembles an armillary he says about the sense of hearing as well: it is
sphere. The structure of the World-Soul consists given to us for the sake of contemplation and
of Pythagorean proportions made up of the num- learning; and also in order to enable us on the
bers 1-2-3-4-9-8-27, a compound of two geomet- basis of audible harmony to bring the movements
ric series (1-3-9-27 and 2-4-8), which taken of our soul, too, into a harmonious order” (Ficino
together determine the harmony of the cosmos. 1496, 77v, trans. Prins 2014, 153).
In the Timaean cosmogonic myth, Plato subse- Despite strong and persistent support enduring
quently presents a musical scale that connects into the Renaissance for Aristotle’s rejection of a
4 Harmony, Renaissance Conceptions of

sonorous universe in favor of his own silent between them, because, to his mind, the tones of a
spheres (On the Heavens, ii.9), as noted by Haar single scale would reduce the mighty polyphony
(1973–4, 40), Plato’s ideas about world harmony of the planetary spheres. He was convinced that
continued to be influential and long-lasting, “we will find that low tones in the heavens are
whether formulated in terms of harmonics or audi- mixed with high [tones], and that the same spheres
ble music (Prins and Vanhaelen 2017). These give out a high tone by the one motion and a low
ideas where often read through the lens of sources tone by the other, [because] from multiple revolu-
such as Cicero’s (106–43 BCE) Dream of Scipio, tions are generated tones in an equal multiple
which is a dream placed at the end of his De proportion” (Ficino 1496, 72r, trans. Prins 2014,
republica in direct imitation of Plato’s myth of 107). Ficino continued to believe strongly in the
Er. In his restatement of musica mundana, existence of a musical universe, yet, instead of the
Gioseffo Zarlino (1517–1590), for example, precise nature of the cosmic scale (musica
quoted, in his Institutioni harmoniche (1558), mundana), he was far more interested in the con-
the answer of Scipio Africanus the Elder, who is cept of musica humana, the harmonious makeup
asked by the younger in Cicero’s Dream of Scipio and working of the human body and soul and their
to report his dream of cosmic harmony: “What is interaction, and for this purpose he consulted var-
this sound, so loud and beautiful, which reached ious sources, including medieval Arab theories
my ears?” Scipio the elder replies that “It is caused about the healing and harmonizing powers of
by the impulse and movement of the spheres music.
themselves . . . distinguished by definite propor- Already in Ptolemy’s (fl. 127–148) Harmonics
tions. The high sounds mixed with low ones make a distinction was made between cosmic and psy-
different harmonies: for so great a motion could chic harmony. This subdivision of “harmony” was
not take place in silence. And Nature has arranged further developed by Boethius (c. 480–525) into
that the extremes of one end should sound low, musica mundana, humana, and instrumentalis,
those of the other end high. Therefore the highest the latter referring to music played and sung by
circuit, that of the starry heaven, which has the men on earth (Boethius 1989, Hammerstein 1962,
fastest revolution moves with a higher and louder 116–144). Till the end of the Renaissance, this
sound: and the lowest, lunar, one with the deepest subdivision of the science and art of music was
sound” (Zarlino 1558, 16, trans. Godwin 1993, used in academic circles. Yet, the medieval study
206). Given the universal law of discordia of music as a branch of the Quadrivium, which
concors, the sound of the spheres is presented was primarily the study of harmonics, that is, of
here as a harmony of carefully proportioned inter- the definitions of musical consonances in terms of
vals, there being seven tones in all. These seven their numerical proportions, was criticized by
planetary tones were equated by Macrobius Renaissance Neoplatonists as being too scholastic
(1952, fl. c. 400) in his Commentary on the and too remote from ancient Greek musical real-
Dream of Scipio and later commentators such as ity, which they sought to revive.
Zarlino with the seven numbers of Plato’s geo- For this purpose, these Renaissance scholars
metric series in the Timaeus. consulted sources such as Aristides Quintilianus’s
Macrobius’s cosmic scale was based on daily (late third–early fourth century) On Music, which
planetary motion and ascribes the lowest tone to provided a cosmic explanation of the musical
the Moon with the other planets following in sensitivity of the human soul and body and the
order. Within the tradition of the harmony of the role of music in education, not only in childhood
spheres, it was juxtaposed with the opposite one but throughout life. During the Middle Ages, the
of Nicomachus of Gerasa (c. 60–120), which is treatise was already regarded by Byzantine and
based on annual planetary motion and ascribes the Arab scholars as a basic work, but its importance
lowest tone to Saturn. Like the majority of Renais- was generally acknowledged by Renaissance
sance scholars, Ficino discussed these two cosmic scholars. Man’s growth, bodily proportions, and
scales, but he could not make a definitive choice behavior were envisioned by Aristides as a
Harmony, Renaissance Conceptions of 5

microcosmic mirror of the macrocosm. Every- of these criteria result in four types of people
thing in a human life, from the proportions of according to their astrological indications: men
man’s body and soul and their interaction, through born under the sign of Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius
the human life cycle, until the development of are hot and dry, choleric, masculine, and oriental;
human character and behavior was perceived as those born under Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn are
governed by analogy with, or dependence upon, cold and dry, melancholic, feminine, and occiden-
celestial harmony (Gersh 1996, 268–273). Aristi- tal; those of the sign of Gemini, Aquarius, and
des formulated his answer to the question of “what Libra are hot and wet, masculine, sanguine, and
coerces the [human] soul to be so readily con- meridional; while those of Cancer, Scorpio, and
quered by melody played on instruments” Pisces, finally, are cold and wet, phlegmatic, femi-
(Aristides Quintilianus 1983, 151–157) in terms nine, and nordic.
of the Neoplatonic theory of the soul’s descent Ficino’s innovative restatement of the doctrine
through the planetary spheres before its incarna- of world harmony is colored by these kinds of
tion at the birth of a human being: “going through astrological ideas about harmony. In his interpre-
the ethereal orbits [of the planetary spheres], the tation, the correspondences between different
soul partakes of everything so far as it is luminous parts of the macrocosm and man were conceptu-
and adapted for warming and naturally enclosing alized in terms of an analogy to musical strings
the body, plaiting certain bonds from these orbits and their vibrations. In order to update the medi-
for itself as a sort of latticework by irregular eval idea of static harmonies produced by the
movement of the reciprocal lines among the revolutions or distances of the planetary orbs,
movement themselves. . . . This is the root of the Ficino used the concept of cosmic sympathetic
body, and this they named ‘harmonia.’” This kind vibration to account for an ever-changing har-
of “harmony” not only explains the influence of mony produced by the individual movements of
the heavenly bodies on a human being, but also the planets and the conception of spiritual or
formulates the purpose of a human life: during its demonic entities dwelling in the heavens. Sympa-
life on earth, the soul has to strive for a recollec- thetic vibration, as Ficino explained in his
tion of the heavenly harmony that it heard when it Timaeus commentary, is a harmonic phenomenon
dwelt in heaven and fell through the spheres wherein a formerly passive string responds to
before becoming embodied. The individual must external vibrations of an active string to which it
then draw upon this memory to create a better life has a harmonic likeness: “If from one sounding
for himself and his fellow human beings. lyre a tone suddenly is communicated to another
We encounter a similar conception of musica lyre tuned in the same way, then immediately from
humana in many Renaissance sources, for exam- this vibrating string a similar vibration is passed
ple, in an illustration of harmonious man by the on to the [other] string which is equally tuned”
hand of the Limbourg Brothers (Fig. 2). Man is (Ficino 1496, 71r, trans. Prins 2014, 99). In
defined here in terms of a harmonious discord Ficino’s view of world harmony, the heavenly
(discordia concors): composed of the frontal fem- spheres embody a radiating harmonious law
inine blond figure and the masculine dark figure which links everything in the cosmos together.
seen from the back. According to the comments The concept of sympathetic vibration was also
inscribed in the corners of this picture, humanity used by Ficino to update the Platonic view of the
can be divided into several different categories, human soul in terms of a harmony of abstract
which are based on different temperaments, that numbers, in which the relation of soul to body
is, different compositions of the four humors and was envisaged as an organization by a preexisting
their elemental qualities: choleric (fire), sanguine harmony of numbers which outlasts the body. He
(air), phlegmatic (water), and melancholic (earth). combined this theory with a Pythagorean concep-
Man may be further categorized in relationship to tion of the soul as a harmony of the body like the
the cardinal zodiacal points, which correspond to attunement of the strings of a lyre. By embracing
particular parts of the body and soul. Combinations the second theory, which avoids the mind-body
6 Harmony, Renaissance Conceptions of

Harmony, Renaissance
Conceptions of, Fig. 2
Harmonious man. In: The
Limbourg Brothers, Très
Riches Heures du Duc de
Berry (1400–1416), MS
65, fol. 14v (Reproduced
with kind permission of the
Musée Condé, Chantilly)

dualism of the first theory, Ficino was able to offer can discover the influence of heavenly bodies on
a comprehensible model of mind-body interac- his life. They wanted to employ this knowledge,
tion, which may account for its growing popular- moreover, to counteract this celestial influence or
ity from the sixteenth century onwards. In this to use it for the purpose of becoming a more
model, the self was often defined as a taut string harmonious being. Ficino exploited the scientific
and, accordingly, the purpose of life as the pursuit possibilities implicit in astrology to the full and
of well-temperedness. employed them in the context of musical ceremo-
Ficino’s idea of man as cocreator of his own nies, which were organized with the purpose of
harmonic nature is also in line with a conception drawing down cosmic harmonizing influences to
of human freedom that emerged during the better life on earth (Ficino 1989, 354–363).
Renaissance. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola In summary, one of the major Renaissance
(1463–1494) gave voice to this idea in his Oration transformations of the tradition of the harmony
on the Dignity of Man (1486), where he argued of the spheres was the closure of the gap between
that man with his free will stood apart from the theories of the harmony of the world and ideas of
great chain of being, was given the ability to music’s ethical power to affect man’s body and
distinguish between good and bad, and thus to a soul, via ancient Greek and medieval Islamic
certain extent was free to choose an edifying har- writings, which humanists sought to revive
monious life. Ficino and Pico did not believe that (Haar 1961, 328–495; Tomlinson 1993,
man’s destiny was determined for him by his stars 67–100). But the aspects of astrology and magic
but were interested in the question of how man that were necessary to close this gap were not
Harmony, Renaissance Conceptions of 7

appreciated by all scholars interested in world reconcilable with biblical passages concerning the
harmony. Even though there was no real distinc- harmony of God’s creation. In order to be able to
tion between world harmony and astrology for make full use of the Pythagorean doctrine of per-
ancient Neoplatonic, medieval Arabic writers fect harmony, Renaissance scholars such as
and their Renaissance followers, philosophers Ficino, Pico, Francesco Giorgi (1466–1540), and
such as Marin Mersenne (1588–1648) thought Francesco Patrizi (1529–1597) used the narrative
that astrological and magical beliefs threatened of a prisca theologia or pia philosophia.
the established Christian scholarly belief in the According to this belief, a single, true, primordial
creation of a harmonious world. wisdom-religion, which passes through all reli-
Ficino had argued that music produces certain gions and philosophies, was given by God
effects on an individual, depending on the con- to enlightened men such as Zoroaster, Hermes
stellations with which he was associated, i.e., his Trismegistus, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, and
horoscope, but Mersenne totally rejected this idea Moses. This narrative enabled scholars to use
in his Quaestiones celeberrimae in Genesim pagan texts such as Plato’s Timaeus to explain
(1623; Most Frequently asked Questions about vague and obscure passages in the biblical crea-
Genesis) (which he wrote before his famous tion story. Pico, for example, drew on sources
Harmonie universelle (1636)) and warned: “He from the tradition of the harmony of the spheres
who composes music in the likeness of the to demonstrate the universal truth of some of his
heavens will never succeed in restraining mad- Pythagorean conclusions, such as “6. The three-
ness, either because there are no [harmonies] in fold proportion – Arithmetical, Geometrical, and
the heavens or because, granted there be some, Harmonic – represents to us the three daughters of
they could never by apprehended by us” Themis [i.e. divine universal law], being the sym-
(Mersenne 1623, 1704; transl. Haar 1961, 501). bols of judgment, justice, and peace” (Pico 1486,
This reaction is symptomatic of the emergence of 48, trans. Godwin 1993, 176).
a new musical reality in which beauty and the Jewish, Gnostic, and Christian belief in the
complementary idea of celestial harmony were angelic habitation of the universe, originating
gradually replaced by concepts of expressivity from ideas about angelic hierarchies in sources
and emotion. This transformation into a form of such as Pseudo-Dionysius’s On the Celestial
idealism that is ontologically more subjective than Hierarchy (c. late fifth century), led to a belief in
original Pythagorean and Platonic conceptions of a musica coelestis, angels in heaven making
“harmony” is expressed clearly in Mersenne’s music in praise of God (Hammerstein 1962,
dismissal of Ficino’s astrological interpretation 116–119; Gersh 1996, 199–201). These kinds of
of world harmony: “It is completely objectionable ideas of heavenly harmony persisted even in the
that any kind of influence has been drawn down later Middle Ages, when Pythagorean thinking
from the stars by singing, for a particular song had to make way in academic circles for Aristote-
does not evoke sadness or happiness in us because lian thought. Giorgio Anselmi (c. 1386–1440/3),
it is performed under a particular star, as is indi- presumably inspired by Dante, formulated an
cated by the fact that the same song has the same innovative view of musica celestis in which a
power when heard under various constellations, static music of the spheres produced by the indi-
as experience will confirm” (Mersenne 1623, vidual tones of a musical scale was developed into
1705, my trans.). a dynamic symphony of planetary harmony and
Alongside ancient Greek theories, Jewish and angelic song: “The tireless soul of the whole
Christian beliefs in a harmonious universe shaped world, indeed, sings with the same [harmony] its
Renaissance conceptions of “harmony.” As noted ceaseless praises to the eternal, most high and all-
by Hammerstein (1962, 119–121) and Gersh beneficent Governor by means of the celestial
(1996, 21–27), for Church Fathers such as motions, with which the holy throngs of blessed
Augustine (354–430), Pythagorean and Neopla- spirits, sweetly echoing, contend in song and in
tonic beliefs could be adopted as long as they were the ineffable beauty of their rivalling hymns”
8 Harmony, Renaissance Conceptions of

(Anselmi 1961, 97, trans. Godwin 1993, 146).

Even though serious earthly music was seen as
an echo of this heavenly harmony, it could be best
perceived in moments of ecstasy or divine enlight-
enment as experienced by St. Cecilia, who is
captured by Raphael in a moment of transcen-
dence of the world of broken and unstrung musi-
cal instruments (Fig. 3).
Francesco Giorgi, whose knowledge of
Pythagorean harmonic proportions was called
upon when he was asked for advice on the har-
monic proportions for the new church of San
Francesco della Vigna in Venice, extended the
doctrine of world harmony with Cabbalistic
ideas, which in a Christianized form underpin
his Harmonia mundi (1525). In this enormous
work on world harmony, Giorgi dealt with the
harmony of the whole creation in terms of the
ten “Sefirot,” i.e., attributes through which God
manifests himself by emanation in his creation.
Giorgi applied Platonic and Cabbalistic number
symbolism to this restatement of the doctrine of
perfect harmony, writing in effect a wide-ranging
commentary on the biblical creation story. This
book in itself was meant to be an echo of the
harmony of God’s creation, and the purpose
Harmony, Renaissance Conceptions of,
behind the enterprise of writing and reading it Fig. 3 Raphael, The Ecstasy of St. Cecilia
was to be reunited with God. (c. 1515–1516) (Reproduced with kind permission of the
Giorgi, for example, argued along the lines of photographic archive of the Pinacoteca Nazionale,
Bologna)
the prisca theologia that Ezekiel, when he wrote
that the biblical sentence “The spirit of life was in
the wheels” [Ezekiel 1:20] could be understood that he made man too harmonious and divine, as a
through the lens of the Timaean narrative of cre- result of which Giorgi’s occult and mystical work
ation, equating the wheels with the harmonious was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books.
spheres. Self-knowledge, furthermore, could also The concept of “harmony” continued to be
lead into insight in God’s archetypal harmony, elaborated in the late sixteenth and seventeenth
because: “Man, as the most perfect image of the centuries by Neoplatonic philosophers, theolo-
world, contains all those things which one finds in gians, astronomers, astrologers, physicians,
the macrocosm in the same proportion. . . . In the music theorists, architects, and poets. In the disci-
human intellect . . . one finds a purer order of pline of music theory, the tuning system outlined
simpler numbers which corresponds to the nine in the Timaeus became the subject of debate dur-
choirs of angels and to the nine higher sefirot ing this period, because it was incompatible with
[i.e. divine attributes], so that there is within it tuning and temperament as used in musical prac-
the whole image of the Angels and of God” tices. Ficino’s Timaeus commentary, for example,
(Zorzi [=Giorgi], 2010, 536, my trans.). Giorgi already evinces a certain awareness of the prob-
was convinced that due to the divine spark in lem that what started in the Timaean myth of
man’s soul, he was capable of knowing world creation as a system of consonances involving
harmony; but the Inquisition was of the opinion only small whole numbers turns out to be less
Harmony, Renaissance Conceptions of 9

simple when applied to Renaissance musical per- with the Holy Scripture: “as when the Lord speaks
formance practice. During the course of the fif- to Job, saying: ‘Who will tell of your ordinances,
teenth century, polyphonic music had started to O voices of the heavens? And who will make their
develop, and in addition to the harmonic use of music sleep?’ [Job 38: 137]” (Zarlino 1558,
octaves (2:1), fifths (3:2), and fourths (4:3) – hith- 16, trans. Godwin 1993, 207). Zarlino did what-
erto, the only harmonic intervals generally defined ever it takes to keep “the music of the voice of the
in a music-theoretical treatise – there was a grad- heavens” awake in order not to lose the cosmo-
ual adoption of thirds (81:64) and sixths (27:16), logical significance of earthly music. All argu-
which involve relatively large numbers. The use ments against the notion of an inaudible music
of these intervals dictated a modification of the of the spheres were countered by an appeal to
Pythagorean tuning in which the major third reason, which for him as a rationalist was ranked
(81:64) became slightly flattened to 80:64, or higher than the sense of hearing. But this led to a
5:4, and the major sixth also became slightly vehement dispute with Vincenzo Galilei
flattened, from 27:16 to 25:15, or 5:3. At the (1520–1591), who demonstrated in his Discorso
same time the fourth as a harmonic interval expe- intorno alle opera di Gioseffo Zarlino (1589) that
rienced devaluation. These changes were reflected the Pythagorean belief in the expressibility of
in the musical thought of Ficino’s Timaeus com- musical sound in terms of simple numerical pro-
mentary: while the octave and fifth are still portions was wrong. Galilei decided to repeat the
defined as primary consonances, Ficino observed experiments that Pythagoras was supposed to
that the fourth “in the sense of hearing is not have conducted at home after his discovery
appreciated as a consonance in its own right.” In about the musical intervals in the smithy (Walker
addition, he recognized the third and the sixth as 1978, 23–26). In order to test his hypothesis, as is
primary consonances, which, in his opinion, were reported in various sources, Pythagoras tied
present in the diatonic scale to temper “with their weights to strings of equal length and found in
more delicate sweetness” the dissonance of the the musical tones this produces the same simple
second and seventh tones of the scale” (Ficino numerical proportions that had been revealed in
1496, 71v, trans. Prins 2014, 65). his original discovery with hammers of different
During the Renaissance, different attempts sizes: the octave being 2:1, the fifth 3:2 and the
were undertaken to update the Pythagorean tuning fourth 4:3. Based on a repetition of this experi-
system, inspired by the desire to defend the very ment, Galilei revealed that this was incorrect: in
foundation of the belief in a harmonic creation. order to get these results, the weights tied to the
The structural problem that the musical intervals strings must be in squared, not simple, inverse
of the Pythagorean tuning system did not quite proportion to the string lengths. Thus, to create
add up, however, became more and more press- the octave-fifth-fourth series, the weight-string
ing. The difficulty arises in the relationship relationship would need to be, respectively, 4:1,
between octaves and fifths: 8 octaves do not 9:4, and 16:9; the squares of the simple numbers
equal 12 fifths. The series of fifths results in a of Pythagoras’s discovery.
note which is a little bit higher than the note In Girolamo Cardano’s (1501–1575) account
produced by the octave series, a mathematical of the sense of hearing, a new concept of harmony
difference which is defined as the Pythagorean emerged which was more subjective than the orig-
comma. After Ficino, Zarlino tried to solve this inal doctrine of Pythagorean harmony. Even
problem by replacing the Pythagorean scale with a though he stressed the importance of Pythagorean
new system called just intonation, which attempts proportion to distinguish between consonance and
to rectify the deficiency of the Pythagorean scale dissonance in the sense of hearing, he
by founding itself upon both pure fifths (3:2) and complemented his definition with far more sub-
pure major (5:4) and minor (5:3) thirds. In his jective criteria. Whether we enjoy a harmony or
Institutioni harmoniche (1558), Zarlino expressed consonance not only depended on its perfect pro-
the belief that this adaptation was fully in accord portions but also on the context within which it
10 Harmony, Renaissance Conceptions of

was presented to us, because “better things are Alberti (1404–1472) and Andrea Palladio
always pleasing after worse ones, . . . so light pleases (1508–1580) was fully consistent with the
after darkness, sweetness after bitterness, oil of roses rediscovery of Pythagorean proportions and their
after dill, and consonant tones after dissonances” sixteenth-century music-theoretical adaptation
(Cardano 1966, III, 572, trans. Miller, 1973, 212). mentioned above. Just like in music, according
The debate about the status of Pythagorean to Rudolf Wittkower (1949/1973, 142–154), this
proportions also played a role in the context of development ultimately culminated in a break
the philosophy of nature, with far-reaching con- from the laws of harmonic proportion in favor of
sequences for arithmetic-driven accounts of har- a subjective concept of beauty based on the newly
mony (Palisca 1985, Vendrix 2008). For instance, discovered laws of perception, already formulated
the Italian philosopher Francesco Patrizi argued in by scholars such as Cardano.
his Nova de universis philosophia (1591) that the Although a literal belief in the existence of the
Pythagorean belief that numbers are the ultimate harmony of the spheres was jeopardized from the
constituents of reality, which is the very founda- sixteenth century onwards by new ideas about the
tion of the Pythagorean doctrine of world har- cosmos, man and music, restatements of the belief
mony, was nothing but superstition: “The in world harmony continued to appear. Universal
Ancients based themselves on divination rather harmony was described in seventeenth-century
than knowing the cause.” As a corrective to Italian, French, and especially English poetry,
these ancient unscientific beliefs about number, where the evocations of celestial harmony, in the
Patrizi argued that “Continuous quantity [i.- words of John Hollander became “decorative met-
e. lines] exists by nature, while [the discrete quan- aphor and mere turns of wit” (Hollander 1961,
tity of] number is the work of the human mind” 19). Yet, ideas from the tradition of the harmony
(Patrizi 1591, 68r, trans. Prins 2014, 243). Hence, of the spheres, such as the poet as maker of a
a philosophy of nature, which includes the natural harmonious microcosm continued to flourish
phenomena of sound, could not be based on num- (Heninger 1974, 287–324).
bers, because these were merely conventional These metaphorical restatements of Pythago-
constructs. As a consequence, Patrizi abandoned rean harmony were paired with drastic revisions
the Pythagorean belief that the universe was in the field of cosmology, where Johannes Kepler
ordered by numerical proportions that produce (1571–1630) argued in his Harmonices mundi
harmonies in earthly music from his philosophy (1619), further developing Ptolemy’s view of
of nature. world harmony, that not only the Pythagorean
During the Renaissance, occasional attempts tuning of the Timaeus scale, but that the whole
were undertaken to imitate angelic song or plane- notion of world harmony had to be updated in line
tary harmony in earthly music. Apart from some with the emerging view of a heliocentric world
remarks of a few initiates who witnessed Ficino’s view (Spitzer 1963; Walker 1978, 34–62).
improvised musico-magical practices, regrettably, Replacing the earth with the sun meant that the
they left no material trace. Yet a number of poly- planetary distances and revolutions needed to be
phonic compositions similar to the 36-part canon revised in a drastic way to save the notion of world
by Romano Micheli (used in Kircher’s frontis- harmony. As a solution, Kepler defined the inter-
piece, Fig. 1) survive in print, as does the tableau vals between the Copernican planetary spheres by
L’armonia delle sfere, which was designed for the the five regular solids of Greek geometry and
Florentine intermedi of 1589 – a rendering of found these new harmonic proportions express-
Plato’s myth of Er – and Stefano Landi’s religious ible in the musical terms of an old-fashioned con-
opera San Alessio (1634). trapuntal composition, of which the different
Other aspects of Renaissance culture were also voices symbolize the movements of the planets
influenced by the Pythagorean doctrine of “har- which are orbiting the sun.
mony,” however. The use of harmonious propor- Like Ficino before him, who in a variation on
tions in ideas about architecture of Leon Battista the dream of Scipio in the form of a letter inspired
Harmony, Renaissance Conceptions of 11

a political leader of his day to use the doctrine of ▶ Pico della Mirandola
heavenly harmony as a model for his form of ▶ Plato, (neo)Platonism
government, Kepler was also convinced that har- ▶ Poetics
mony in nature should be used as a point of ▶ Prisca Theologia [or: Pia Philosophia]
departure to create a harmonious society. Yet, ▶ Ptolemy
while he first saw in harmonious nature a coherent ▶ Pythagoras, (neo)Pythagoreanism
unity that might be mimicked in an earthly society ▶ Robert Fludd
adopting one truth, he later emphasized the peace- ▶ Vincenzo Galilei
ful and harmonious coexistence of diverse per- ▶ Well-Temperedness [link: moral philosophy,
spectives (Rothman 2012, 18 and 342). medicine/music therapy]
In sharp contrast with the innovative ideas of
his contemporary Kepler, Robert Fludd
(1574–1637) continued to defend in his Utriusque
cosmi... historia (1617) the absolute truth of the References
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