Harmonies of Heaven and Earth: Mysticism in Music from Antiquity to the Avant-Garde

243 Pages·1987·4.65 MB·English

by  Joscelyn Godwin

For Janet
CONTENTS
Cover Image
Title Page
Dedication
Preface and Acknowledgments
Part One: Ascending Parnassus
Chapter 1: The Marvellous Effects of Music
Chapter 2: Hearing Secret Harmonies
Part Two: The Great Work
Chapter 3: Musical Alchemy
Chapter 4: Music and the Currents of Time
Part Three: The Music of the Spheres
1. The Cosmological Framework
2. Planet-Scales, Type A
3. Modern Schemes: Titius-Bode and Goldschmidt
4. Planet-Scales, Type B
5. Planets, Tones, and the Days of the Week
6. Planet-Scales, Type C
7. Systems with Movable Tones: Eriugena, Anselmi
8. Kepler’s Planetary Music
9. Intervals and the Astrological Aspects
10. Tone-Zodiacs
11. Angelic Orders and Muses: The Great Chain of Being
12. The Three means
13. Gurdjieff’s law of octaves
14. The Harmonic Series and its Symbolism
15. The Subharmonic Series
16. The Lambdoma and the Pythagorean Table
17. Beyond Manifestation: 1/1 and 0/0
Endnotes
Bibliography of Works Cited
About the Author
About Inner Traditions • Bear & Company
Copyright & Permissions
PREFACE and ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T
his book was first written in the early 1980s as part of a project to assemble
the materials for a study of ‘speculative music’. Its companion works are a pair
of sourcebooks, Music, Mysticism and Magic (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986)
and The Harmony of the Spheres (Inner Traditions International, 1993); two
specialized studies, The Mystery of the Seven Vowels (Phanes Press, 1991) and
Music and the Occult: French Musical Philosophies, 1750–1950 (University of
Rochester Press, 1995, first published in French, Albin Michel, 1991); an
anthology of German writers, Cosmic Music (Inner Traditions International,
1989); and two editions of older works, Fabre d’Olivet’s Music Explained as
Science and Art (Inner Traditions International, 1988) and Michael Maier’s
Atalanta Fugiens (Phanes Press, 1987).
Harmonies of Heaven and Earth is the key work of this project, as it does not
merely present the thoughts of others but attempts to make its own contribution
to the tradition of speculative music. Rather than proceeding chronologically, it
moves through successive layers of a universe which may broadly be called
Hermetic. The book is organized in three parts. Part I discusses the theory and
nature of music and its effects over the different levels of a “great chain of
being” which stretches from the stones beneath our feet to the Empyrean
Heaven. Part II returns to earth to treat the human dimension of music as it
concerns the composer and listener, its moral and religious implications, and its
relation to the hidden currents of history. Part III follows, in a chain of linked
sections, with the speculative attempts to integrate music with mystical and
esoteric theories of the universe: the shifting harmonies of the planets in their
courses, and the correspondences of the seven notes of the diatonic scale, the
twelve of the chromatic scale, and the unlimited range of harmonics. Part III
contains material difficult to find elsewhere, but it is at times rather technical,
and not all readers will want to attempt it, nor need they.
Harmonies of Heaven and Earth has been published in Japanese, German,
French, and (partial) Spanish translations, and has brought me many letters from
readers. I welcome the opportunity to incorporate some of their suggestions and
all of their corrections. In particular, my friend Nicolas Tereshchenko has
enabled me to improve the chapter on Gurdjieff ’s Law of Octaves, and Todd
Pratum and David Fideler (unintentionally) have made me reconsider my
censure of popular music. I hope that the book will continue to be useful to
people working with the esoteric aspects of music, both in theory and in practice.
Earlville, New York, April 1994