Music of the Spheres
Music of the Spheres. The perfect harmonies created by the friction between the moving spheres of Greek (and later Christian) cosmology. It was originally a Pythagorean theory, expounded by Plato (Republic 10. 11) but rejected by Aristotle (On the Heavens 2. 9. 12). Boethius (On the Principles of Music) laid out the relations between the music of the spheres which is inaudible to human ears (musica mundana), the harmonies of a correspondingly well-ordered human life (musica humana), and the music of instruments (musica instrumenta constituta): humans mediate between the perfect harmonies of the heavenly spheres and the potential chaos and disorder of the lower worlds. Although the Copernican revolution destroyed the cosmology, the underlying idea of attainable harmonies persisted, as can be seen, e.g., in Thomas Browne (1605–82), Religio Medici.
More From encyclopedia.com
Absolute Music , "Absolute music" is an idea that took root in the writings of early German Romantics such as Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder (1773–1798), Ludwig Tieck (… World Music , The term “world music” was first circulated in ethnomusicology (the study of music in or as culture) and entered Western popular culture as a categor… Mus , Mus. Abbreviation for ‘Music’, as in B.Mus. (Bachelor of Music), D.Mus. (Doctor of Music), etc. Musicology , Musicology is the scholarly study of music, where music can be considered either as a fixed object of investigation or as a process whose participant… Atonality , atonality (ā´tōnăl´Ĭtē), in music, systematic avoidance of harmonic or melodic reference to tonal centers (see key). The term is used to designate a… Harmony , Harmony
Harmony is derived from the classical Greek harmonia (meaning a joint between the planks of a ship or a joining of those planks). From the be…
You Might Also Like
NEARBY TERMS
Music of the Spheres