THE HARMONY DEBATES
Exploring a practical philosophy for a sustainable future
Edited by Nicholas Campion
SOPHIA CENTRE PRESS
In partnership with
The University of Wales Trinity Saint David
and
The Sustainable Food Trust
The Harmony Debates
edited by Nicholas Campion
© Sophia Centre Press 2020
First published in 2020.
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The Music of the Spheres:
Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance HARMONIA
Angela Voss
Most people are familiar with the exquisite painting by Sandro Botticelli
(1445-1510) known as the Primavera. But perhaps it is not so widely known
that the programme of its enigmatic symbolism was inspired by the Neoplatonic
notion of the harmony of creation, reflected in the correspondences of the
mythological characters to both the eight planetary spheres and the eight tones
of the musical octave.1 It is probably even less appreciated that Botticelli’s visual
metaphor for the harmony of the spheres was inspired by the work of one man,
Marsilio Ficino of Florence (1433-99), whose desire to unite heaven and earth in
the soul of the human being found its precedent in the writings of the Platonic
tradition. In restoring ‘the divine Plato’ to Renaissance Florence, Ficino set out
to ‘redeem holy religion’ from the ‘abominable ignorance’ of secular philosophy.2
My intention in this paper is to illustrate how music theory and performance
became part of a programme of spiritual development stemming directly from
a symbolic understanding of the cosmos which transcended, and yet embraced,
all quantitative modes of thinking. Such a mode of ‘knowing’ was conveyed by
Ficino in the Latin word notio (from which our word ‘notion’ is derived) in the
course of his translation of the Neoplatonist Iamblichus’ treatise on divination,
De mysteriis, Iamblichus asserts,
Contact with divinity is not knowledge. For knowledge is in a certain respect
separated from its object by otherness. But prior to knowledge – as one things
knows another – is the uniform connection with divinity, which is suspended
from the gods, and is spontaneous and inseparable from them.3
In Iamblichus’ explanation of unitive thought, Ficino recognised the ground of
both philosophical speculation and religious piety without which ‘knowledge’
becomes dissociated from the primary reality of the world and thus, can be of
little meaning. I believe Ficino’s articulation of this insight to be the creative
impulse behind the immense flowering of intellect in the Italian High Renaissance,
inspiring art forms which arose from an intensely erotic relationship between the
individual soul and the beauty of creation. As Ficino himself exclaimed,
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Angela Voss
Bust of Marsilio Ficino by Sandrea di Piero Ferrucci (1522),
Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence.
The Music of the Spheres: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance HARMONIA
249
This age, like a golden age, has brought back to light those liberal disciplines
that were practically extinguished; grammar, poetry, oratory, painting,
sculpture, architecture, music, and the ancient singing of songs to the Orphic
lyre. And all this in Florence.4
The founder of the Platonic Academy, Ficino both translated into Latin for the first
time the complete works of Plato, Plotinus and others, and combined his vocation
as a Christian priest with active work as an astrologer, herbalist, magician and
musician. Philosophically, his life-long project was to bring together what he called
‘faith’ and ‘reason’ by marrying Christianity and Platonism. He also translated
Zoroaster, Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, the Chaldaean Oracles, Iamblichus,
Synesius and Proclus and read Al-Kindi, the Picatrix, the Arabic astrologers,
Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon. Out of these diverse sources emerged his own
system of natural magic, centred on the combination of astrology and music, whose
efficacy depended on more than theoretical knowledge and technical expertise. This
meant, in practical terms, that astrology, talismanic magic, herbal medicine and
music-making found their place as dynamic expressions of both deep philosophical
inquiry and intuitive inspiration, combined with extensive theoretical knowledge.
In looking more closely at Ficinian music therapy, I want to emphasise two
further vital ingredients, which we find continually emphasised in his practical
writings. These are the desire and imagination of the human being, which, when
focused on images such as music, stars, or talismans, somehow facilitate an
interplay with the cosmos and allow the qualities of a particular moment in time
to be seized and recognised. This very process may effect a change in being. When
we fashion images, Ficino says, ‘Our spirit, if it has been intent upon the work and
upon the stars through imagination and emotion, is joined together with the very
spirit of the world and with the rays of the stars through which the world-spirit
acts’.5
It is precisely this subjective element which distinguishes the Renaissance magus
from the medieval theorist, for static hierarchical schemes and correspondences
between planets and music are transformed into dynamic energies at work
throughout creation – energies which can be harnessed and transfused for the
harmonising of individual souls. Following Plotinus, Ficino emphasises the
necessity of focusing the emotion in an act which depends on both intuition
and expertise in order to expand consciousness, ‘Whoever prays to a star in an
opportune and skilled way projects his spirit into the manifest and occult rays of
the star, everywhere diffused and life-giving; from these he may claim for himself
vital stellar gifts’.6
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In the Platonic/Pythagorean tradition, music and the stars are inextricably
linked as audible and visible images of an invisible dimension of existence,
whose intellectual perception is made possible through the senses of hearing
and sight. The foundations of the musical cosmos are established by Plato in
the creation myth of his Timaeus, which itself maintains a vital connection to
Egyptian, Chaldaean and other ancient traditions. In this dialogue, Plato sets up
a model for a three-fold musical cosmos where the movements of the spheres, the
passions of the human soul and the audible sounds of music are all expressions
of a divine intelligence manifesting through the various dimensions of creation.7
Such a tripartite division was to be differentiated by the fifth-century ce theorist,
Boethius, as musica mundana, musica humana and musica instrumentalis,8
and it was commonplace for music theorists to work out elaborate systems
of correspondences between astronomical distances and musical intervals,
between the nature of musical patterns and emotional states, between planetary
characteristics and audible sound. The key, in this tradition, to the ordering
of the cosmos, whether astronomically or musically, is, of course, number – a
discovery which was transmitted to Western thinkers by Pythagoras. Indeed
for the Platonists, number determines all things in nature and their concrete
manifestation, together with all rhythms and cycles of life. Number revealed
by the heavenly bodies unfolds as Time and, as the human soul was seen to
be mirrored in the order of the heavens, divination, or aligning oneself to the
gods, required the appropriate ritual at a precise time. Iamblichus tells us that
the numbers governing nature are the outflowing energies of the gods and, if we
wish to assimilate ourselves to them, we must use their language – that is, align
ourselves with the harmonies underlying the cosmos.9 According to this view,
merely humanly contrived numerical systems, discursive conceptions of number,
or numerological theories, cannot reproduce an experience of unity which will
give rise to true knowledge of first principles.
In the Timaeus, we learn that the Demiurge created a substance called the
world-soul and inserted it into the centre of the world-body.10 He then divided
up this soul-stuff according to the ratios of the three consonant musical intervals:
that is the octave, which resonates in the proportion of 2:1; the perfect fifth,
3:2; and, the perfect fourth, 4:3, continuing, by further division, to create the
intervallic steps of the Pythagorean scale. The soul was cut into two parts which
were bent around each other, forming the circles of the Same and the Different:
the Same containing the unmoving sphere of the fixed stars and the Different
containing the moving instruments of Time, or the planets. The Different was then
divided into narrower strips which were arranged according to the geometrical
The Music of the Spheres: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance HARMONIA
251
progressions of two and three; 1 2 4 8 and 1 3 9 27. Permeating the whole
cosmos, the soul connected the physical world with the eternal, being ‘interfused
everywhere from the centre to the circumference of heaven’ and partaking of
‘reason and harmony’.11
The human soul, also partaking directly of the anima mundi, must therefore
be regulated according to the same proportions. But due to the passions of the
body, the soul on entering it became distorted and stirred up – only the correct
kind of education could restore harmonious equilibrium.12 This education would
induce a recognition of the soul’s congruence with the cosmos through the audible
harmonic framework of the musical scale for, as we have seen, the proportions
in the world-soul could be reproduced in musical sound. The numbers one to
four (the tetraktys) thus, not only form the framework for all musical scales, but
also embody this dynamic process of embodiment in the fourfold movement of
geometry from point to line to plane to solid; from the unity comes the duality
of opposition, the triad of perfect equilibrium and the quaternity of material
existence. Each stage both limits and contains the one following and the initiate
is warned, in the Chaldaean Oracles, ‘do not deepen the plane’.13 That is, extend
towards the material world from the perfect condition of the triad, but do not
lose your limiting power by letting go of it and becoming lost in the quaternity
or chaos of matter. This can be understood musically as the imperative of
maintaining the perfect intervals as defining structures. In listening to geometry
in sound, the perfect intervals set a framework or limit on unlimited sound
and, since the specific arrangement of sizes of tones and semitones within this
framework mirror the exact astronomical relationships of the planets, the very
fabric of creation is brought to the ear and, in Platonic terms, evokes a memory
of the harmonies once heard with the ears of the mind.
From this essential premise, the schemes attributing planets to actual pitches
and astronomical distances to musical intervals abounded. In the ‘Myth of Er’ in
the Republic, Plato suggests that sirens positioned on the rims of the planetary
orbits each sound a pitch, making up a musical scale, much like a Greek lyre
projected into the heavens.14 In another interpretation, found in Cicero’s ‘Dream
of Scipio’, the planets produce different tones according to their various speeds
of revolution. We are told that ‘the high and low tones blended together produce
different harmonies’ and that ‘gifted men, imitating this harmony on stringed
instruments and in singing, have gained for themselves a return to this region,
as have those of exceptional abilities who have studied divine matters even in
earthly life’.15
Exactly how to imitate the music of the spheres thus became the question raised
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Angela Voss
by music theorists and the science of harmonics, or the study of mathematical
properties of musical ratios, was considered to be the first step. It is very difficult
to know how much this highly speculative procedure, considered by Plato to be
the highest form of knowledge, influenced the practical music-making of classical
times. We are certainly better informed about the connection between musica
humana and musica instrumentalis for, central to ancient Greek musical writings
is the concept of ethos, or subtle ethical effects produced in the human psyche by
the use of different modes or ‘set’ combinations of tone-patterns. For example,
the Phrygian mode moved men to anger, the Lydian soothed them, the Dorian
induced gravity and temperance – each quality being reflected in the character of
particular regions. By medieval times, the ancient Greek modes had been replaced
by the eight Church modes, but this did not interrupt the association of subtle
ethical effects by theorists. One twelfth-century writer notes that ‘the modes have
individual qualities of sound, differing from each other, so that they prompt
spontaneous recognition by an attentive musician or even by a practised singer’.16
But what of the connection between ethics and cosmology? Ethical powers
were attributed to systems of pitch, while planets were generally associated with
single pitches. Thus in the writings of most classical theorists, it is difficult to see
how an effective form of musica instrumentalis could influence the human soul
through direct imitation of cosmic harmony, despite the model transmitted by
Plato. Generally speaking, celestial phenomena were made to fit a preconceived
notion of musical order, rather than the phenomena themselves being asked
to reveal their order as principles of intelligence. Although the Middle Ages
produced some great original thinkers in this field, such as John Scotus Eriugena
in the ninth century and indeed the influential Islamic school of musical and
astrological therapy,17 it was only in the fifteenth century that the West began to
explore the practical means by which the harmonic relationships in the cosmos
could be expressed through music, not by literally reproducing astronomical
measurement in sound, but by symbolically evoking a unifying principle at work
in the manifest and unmanifest worlds. With the music theorists, Bartolomé
Ramos de Pareja (c.1440-1522) and Georgio Anselmi (1723-97) we see the seeds
being sown for a revisioning of cosmic music.
Anselmi of Parma, writing in 1434, explicitly rejects the literal Aristotelian
notion, prevalent in the preceding centuries, that the heavenly bodies could make
no sound in their movements and envisions the planets not tied to individual
tones but each singing its own song in counterpoint with the others.18 Like Ficino,
Anselmi was an astrologer, magician and physician and, although his work on
music does not give practical advice on human imitation of heavenly harmonies,
The Music of the Spheres: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance HARMONIA
253
his cosmos is liberated from fixed schemes as the planetary cycles participate in
a great cosmic symphony orchestrated by the Blessed Spirits. He also derived an
eight-octave planetary scale from the Moon to the Fixed Stars from the periods
of the planets’ rotation around the Earth, breaking the bounds of contemporary
musical practice (all music lay within a three-octave limit).19
It is, however, only with his younger Spanish contemporary, Ramos de Pareja,
that we find the beginnings of esoteric philosophy applied to music in the operative
sense. In Ramos’ Musica practica of 1482, this is achieved through the original
move of attributing the Church modes to the planets and so connecting ethos to
planet through practical music. Thus, the Dorian mode, from D to D, relates to
the Sun and has the effect of ‘dispelling sleep’ or the Lydian mode, from F to F,
relates to Jupiter and ‘always denotes joy’; the eighth mode, or Hypermixolydian,
from A to A, epitomises the starry heavens, ‘an innate beauty and loveliness, free
from all qualities and suitable for every use’.20 Ramos’ planet-mode pairings
appear to be without precedent, although he may have been influenced by Arabic
traditions in his native Spain. Most importantly, they reveal a fundamental shift
in perspective, from ‘rational’ astronomical attributions of pitches, to planets
based on distances or speeds, to the realm of the symbolic correspondence of
active imagination. Such heavenly harmonies must now derive from intelligences
informed by an ensouled cosmos and Ramos also matches the nine Muses to each
mode and planet. In other words, the means of effecting a connection between
heaven and earth is a magical one – in a universe of operative affinities and
correspondences, modes can be seen as possessing occult properties which bring
man into relationship with the stars through sympathetic resonance. Musica
practica is also revolutionary in that Ramos revises the standard Pythagorean
tuning system which was proving increasingly restrictive for practising musicians
combining perfect fourths and fifths with consonant thirds and sixths which, in
fact, lays the foundation for a system of equal temperament such as we know
today. Again for the first time, he is concerned with the demands of practising
musicians, not speculating theorists and, in suggesting a possible evocation of
planetary meaning through the right use of mode, he opens the doors wide
for music to be used in a magical context. Ramos illustrates his analogies (see
figure 1) with a complex image of spirals which recall the planets in their spheres
and which is curiously reminiscent of Ficino’s description of sound as series of
spirals in his Commentary on the Timaeus. This oroboros image is of course a
traditional alchemical one and suggests a hidden dimension of spiritual unity
beyond the apparent intellectual game of analogy.
Inevitably, the next step toward a fully-operative musical magic was there
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Angela Voss
Figure 1. Ramos de Pareja’s astronomical-musical analogies from his Musica practica,
1482, ed. J. Wolf in Publikationen der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, Beihefte II
(Leipzig: Martin Brelauer, 1901).
The Music of the Spheres: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance HARMONIA
255
to be taken and, seven years after Ramos’ treatise, Ficino published his own
manifesto for astrological music as a therapy in his Liber de vita, the Book
of Life. Although conceived as a commentary on Plotinus, chiefly to give it
philosophical respectability, this work clearly demonstrates Ficino’s fascination
with the spiritual dimensions of ritual magic and with the potential of astrology
as a liberating approach to self-understanding. Having been born with Saturn
on the ascendant in Aquarius, Ficino knew only too well the limitations of a
melancholy temperament and, the beneficial effects he himself experienced when
playing his lyre and singing, led him to formulate a therapeutic system in which
music was played in accordance with an individual’s horoscope. Ficino gave an
account of his horoscope in his letter to Martin Preninger. He was born on 19th
October 1433 at 21 hours (that is, 21 hours after sunset the previous day),
At that time almost half of Aquarius was rising, together with Pisces, I
think. Saturn in Aquarius was conjunct the Eastern angle, Mars in the same
[sign], in the prison of the twelfth [house], the Sun in Scorpio, together with
Mercury in the ninth house, the Moon in Capricorn: Jupiter in Leo in the
seventh. Venus in the same [house] in Virgo, Fortune in Aries’.21
Mars was in fact in Capricorn and Ficino’s error may have been due to inaccurate
ephemerides. Ficino identified himself with Orpheus who, not only tamed wild
beasts with his song, but also brought back Eurydice from the underworld. At
least one of his friends, the poet Poliziano (1454-1494), associated this restoration
of the feminine with the ‘bringing to light’ of esoteric Platonic wisdom.22
The third part of the Book of Life is entitled, ‘How to arrange your life in
accordance with the heavens’ and concludes Ficino’s project to enrich and vitalise
the dissociated life of a scholar. In chapter twenty-one entitled, ‘The power of
words and song for capturing celestial benefits’, Ficino suggests that the power of
emotionally-charged spoken (or sung) words may intensify the effect of an image,
as the Arabs and Egyptians believed, ‘they hold that certain words pronounced
with a quite strong emotion have great force to aim the effect of images precisely
where the emotions and words are directed.’23 For this process, it is probable that
Ficino used as texts the Hymns of Orpheus which he himself had translated from
the Greek, consisting of epithets to various deities. Indeed, his fellow hermeticist,
Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), affirms that, ‘In natural magic, nothing is
more efficacious than the Hymns of Orpheus, especially if the correct music,
intention of the mind, and all the other circumstances known to the wise are
applied’.24 Combined with these hymns, Ficino composed or improvised a kind
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Angela Voss
of musical accompaniment which appears to draw on the association of modes
with stars suggested by Ramos. He writes that,
tones first chosen by the rule of the stars and then combined according to the
congruity of these stars with each other make a sort of common form, and
in it a celestial power arises. It is indeed very difficult to judge exactly what
combinations of tones especially accord with what sorts of constellations
and aspects. But we can attain this, partly through our own efforts, partly by
some divine chance.25
That is, the confluence of the human and divine, or we might say conscious
and unconscious, dimensions may give rise to a creativity which is in essence
divinatory as it surrenders to a transpersonal law. This is the ‘divine madness’ of
the poet, lover, priest and prophet and we have one eye-witness account of Ficino
himself in the throes of poetic frenzy, ‘his eyes burn, he leaps to his feet, and he
discovers music which he never learnt by rote’.26
Ficino goes further than Ramos in implying the use of particular modes
for particular types of people and gives us three ‘rules for composition’ which
require a detailed knowledge of Boethius’ three musics, expressed here in terms
of astrology, psychology and modal ethos,
The first rule is to inquire diligently what powers in itself or what effects from
itself a given star, constellation or aspect has – what do they remove, what
do they bring? – and to insert these into the meaning of our words, so as to
detest what they remove and approve what they bring. The second rule is to
take note of what special star rules what place or person and then to observe
what sorts of tones and songs these regions and persons generally use, so
that you may supply similar ones, together with the meaning I have just
mentioned, to the words which you are trying to expose to the same stars.
Thirdly, observe the daily positions and aspects of the stars and discover
to what principal speeches, songs, motions, dances, moral behaviour, and
actions most people are usually incited by these, so that you may imitate such
things as far as possible in your song, which aims to please the particular part
of heaven that resembles them and to catch a similar influx.27
The ‘power, timeliness and intention’28 of such a song, says Ficino, will provoke
both singer and audience to imitate the qualities it itself is imitating through its
action on the airy spirit, which connects man’s spirit to the soul of the world. The
The Music of the Spheres: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance HARMONIA
257
music-spirit is conceived by Ficino to be like a living animal, composed of warm
air, ‘still breathing and somehow living’.29 It carries both emotion and meaning
and its influence will depend in part on its congruence with the heavens and
in part with the ‘disposition of the imagination’30 of the singer – that is, on a
synchronicity between external and internal dimensions of experience. The singer
must be a finely-tuned instrument whose spirit has been purified and strengthened
through assimilating the properties of the Sun, for such ‘vital and animal power’31
will readily attract the music spirit – particularly if the ritual is also conducted
at a suitable astrologically-elected hour. The three essential requirements for the
invocation of such a numinous energy are, therefore, the vital solar power of
the singer’s own spirit, the propitious moment, and the singer’s intention, which
unites the desire of his heart and the focusing of his imagination. Then, Ficino
suggests, both mental and physical diseases may be dispelled through sympathetic
resonance between music spirit and human spirit, which encompasses, and acts
on, both body and soul.
The music spirit, moving through the various planetary spheres, will activate
the particular spirit of each, enabling the performer to recreate the music associated
with each heavenly body; for example, the songs of Venus are ‘voluptuous with
wantonness and softness’.32 Ficino explains that when the petitioned planet is
‘dignified’ in the heavens, the performer’s spirit will naturally attract the response
of the planetary spirit, ‘like a string in a lute trembling to the vibration of another
which has been similarly tuned’.33
In a natural magic, based on the neo-Platonic vision of cosmos as harmony, it
is not only audible music which may align the soul with the stars. From talismans,
medicines, odours through the movements of dancing to immaterial qualities
of mind, all may be appropriately used to restore a psychic connection to a
particular planet. Thus ‘well-accorded concepts and motions of the imagination’
lead us to Mars, while ‘tranquil contemplations of the mind’ are the domain
of Saturn.34 Indeed, Ficino understood true alchemy to be the transformation
of the worldly frustrations and hardships traditionally associated with Saturn
into the philosopher’s gold of intellectual contemplation. Opposing Saturn in
Ficino’s own chart we find Jupiter and, of course, this aspect symbolises the very
polarisation of philosophy and religion that Ficino sought to overcome. His own
view of the difficulty represented by the opposition, and the hope that Jupiter
might alleviate Saturn, was expressed in his letter to the Archbishop of Amalfi,
You have divined, I think, how much I have long wanted to live my life with
someone of a Jovial nature, so that something of a bitter, and as I might say,
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Saturnine element, which either my natal star has bestowed on me or which
philosophy has added, might eventually be alleviated by the sweet fellowship
of someone born under Jove.35
Nowhere in Ficino’s writings will one find a lack of poetry, metaphor, myth,
or imagination, even when he is addressing the most technical subjects. Theory
is never divorced from practice, objective ‘truth’ never distilled from the
hermeneutics of spiritual experience – indeed, his criticism falls heavily on those
astrologers whose practice merely consists of knowing all the rules and applying
them in ‘cause and effect’ mode. Ficino’s very language is a language of sign and
symbol, continually pointing towards the inexpressible, yet rich in colour and
pithy in content. So it is not surprising that, when considering the subject of
harmonia or music theory, the concepts of consonance and dissonance are clothed
in metaphoric garb. In his letter, the Principles of Music, Ficino describes the
qualities of intervals in a musical scale as an analogy of the Hermetic procession
of the soul from its origins to its final return to God and it is worth quoting this
passage in full as an example of Ficino’s instinctive ability to bridge the sensible
and the metaphysical,
the lowest note, because of the very slowness of the motion in which it is
engaged, seems to stand still. The second note, however, quite falls away from
the first and is thus dissonant, deep within. But the third, regaining a measure
of life, seems to rise and recover consonance. The fourth note falls away from
the third, and for that reason is somewhat dissonant; yet it is not so dissonant
as the second, for it is tempered by the charming approach of the subsequent
fifth, and simultaneously softened by the gentleness of the preceding third.
Then, after the fall of the fourth, the fifth now arises; it rises…in greater
perfection than the third, for it is the culmination of the rising movement;
while the notes that follow the fifth are held by the followers of Pythagoras
not so much to rise as to return to the earlier ones. Thus the sixth, being
composed of the double third, seems to return to it, and accords very well
with its yielding gentleness. Next the seventh note unhappily returns, or
rather slips back to the second and follows its dissonance. Finally the eighth
is happily restored to the first, and by this restoration, it completes the octave,
together with the repetition of the first, and it also completes the chorus of
the Nine Muses, pleasingly ordered in four stages, as it were the still state, the
fall, the arising and the return.36
The Music of the Spheres: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance HARMONIA
259
In his quest for a unifying perspective, Ficino considers the idea of harmony on
the three levels of manifestation: the intricacies of specific intervallic relationships
in audible music; the relationship of the human senses to specific proportions of
fire, earth, air and water; and finally, what he calls the ‘astronomical causes of
harmony’. Drawing on ‘Book Three’ of Ptolemy’s Harmonics,37 Ficino here seeks
to show the congruence between the human experience of musical intervals and the
tensions inherent in the angular relationships of the zodiacal signs. But, whereas
Ptolemy, as a mathematician, maintains a rigorously objective perspective, aiming
to prove that astrology is a true science dependent on number, Ficino is more
concerned with the practical experience of musicians and astrologers. Ptolemy
focuses on the primacy of the octave, fifth and fourth, but Ficino considers each
interval and aspect to be equally as important in contributing to the overall Good,
the idea of dissonance merely stemming from the imperfection of the earthly
condition. This is justified by music itself – for if the fourth is perfect, how can the
square aspect be regarded as discordant? In his commentary on Plotinus, Ficino
asserts:
indeed not only is Cancer not dissonant from Aries, but it is consonant, for
those parts are both of one greatly uniform body and of the same nature
(which are discordant amongst us by harmonic tempering), and no less in
heaven than in musical song are all things consonant among themselves…
therefore the union of the planets represents for us the consonance of the
octave.38
In the Principles of Music, Ficino illustrates step-by-step how the intervals and
aspects correspond in nature (see figure 2); the second sign ‘falling away’ from
the first as in the dissonant second, the fifth ‘looking benignly’ on the first in a
trine as a model for the perfect fifth.39 The seventh sign, in opposing the first, is
‘very vigorous in its discord’ according to Ficino and ‘seems in its clear hostility
to prefigure the seventh tone in music, which with its vigorous and vehement
quality is now most clearly dissonant from the first’.40 Ficino points out that the
eighth sign, traditionally assigned to death, is therefore considered unfavourable.
But from a theological perspective, it is quite the opposite, as death frees the
soul from the ‘dissonance of the elemental world,41 restoring it to the heavenly
harmony’.42 Thus, its nature is truly represented in the perfect consonance of the
eighth tone, or the octave.
Ficino completes his journey around the zodiac by relating the ninth to
twelfth zodiacal signs back to the first sign. In this way, the ninth sign relates
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Angela Voss
Figure 2. Ficino’s musical scale in relation to the zodiac.
The Music of the Spheres: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance HARMONIA
261
to the perfect fifth, the ‘tenth sign of human ambition’ to the ‘human, middling
dissonance’ of the perfect fourth, the eleventh sign of human friendship to the
interval of the third, and the twelfth sign, ‘allotted to hidden enemies and prison’,
recapitulates the extreme dissonance of the interval of a second.43 It is interesting
that whereas Ptolemy, in his concern for perfect mathematical symmetry, compares
the opposition aspect to an octave, for Ficino, the dissonance of the seventh, which
demands a resolution into the consonant octave, most clearly corresponds to the
experienced tension of the opposition aspect in astrological practice. What is more,
the resolution of the seventh into the perfect concord of the octave musically
embodies a metaphysical potential which, for Ficino, would provide its ultimate
justification. From a psychological perspective, it could be seen to represent the
resolution of the tension of opposites within the individual into a unified Self;
from a spiritual one, it embodies, in sound, the final release of the dissonance and
tension of earthly existence into the perfection of heaven through death.
When Ficino played on his Orphic Lyre, which was probably a harp-like
instrument, the qualities of the musical intervals he plucked from the strings would
thus penetrate the very deepest levels of human experience. Whether he advocates
a conscious use of these analogies when he instructs us to find tones or modes
which correspond to the pattern of the heavens is difficult to say and, perhaps, not
the most important point. Ficino succeeded in bringing the music of the spheres to
earth by recognising the uniting and transforming power of symbolic perception
– a power whose apprehension depends on a suspension of rational thought and
the willingness to be guided by the imagination.
Strongly influenced by Ficino, at the end of the fifteenth century, we find the
Milanese music theorist, Franchino Gafori (1451-1522), continuing the theme of
harmonic correspondence and elaborating on Ramos’ analogies to embrace all
aspects of modal ethos related to Muses, planets and signs of the zodiac. If we look
at the woodcut he included in two of his works to illustrate this cosmic harmony
(see figure 3), we find what Ficino might call ‘an image of the world’, in which
each planet and Muse occupies a sphere or medallion and the alchemical serpent,
or three-headed Cerberus, connects the feet of Apollo to the silent, unmoving
earth.44 The serpent can be seen as a bow, drawn across the eight strings of the
celestial lyre or, alternatively, as a monochord punctuated by the eight intervals
of the octave. Out of the bosom of the earth, where the muse Thalia lies silent,
the song germinates. To the lowest string is given the Hypodorian mode; Gafori
says ‘Persephone and Clio breathe and therefore the Hypodorian is born; here
arises the origin of song’.45 Gafori continues his explanation of the diagram up
through the planetary spheres, also associating each planet with its zodiacal sign;
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Figure 3. Frontispiece to Gaffurius’ Practica musica, 1496.
The Music of the Spheres: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance HARMONIA
263
for example, ‘the sixth string, parhypate meson, has Jove, home of Pisces and
Sagittarius, also Euterpe and the Lydian mode…the Lydian of Euterpe contains
also the music of Jove; sounding sweetly, the sixth string rules because a goddess
is present.’ Above the starry heavens, the whole harmony is governed by Apollo,
who directs the dance of the three Graces to his right. Cupids fly overhead, playing
a lute and lira, while the entire diagram is crowned by an inscription from a poem
on the Muses by Ausonius, ‘The spirit of Apollo moves these Muses everywhere’.
In this animated heaven, the divine spirit manifests through the female principles
of poetic inspiration and Edgar Wind suggests that the vase of flowers to Apollo’s
left probably signifies the celestial crater through which the spirit descends to the
natural world. 46 Wind also points out that the serpent of Apollo, the Cerberus of
Serapis, curls the end of its tail into a loop in an image of eternity or perfection
(as in the variant of the serpent biting its own tail), thus evoking the Platonic
notion of Time issuing from Eternity as the spheres emanate down from their
unchanging source. We also notice that there are six flowers in the vase and three
Graces, adding up to the number of Muses, nine. Thus, the number six can be
seen as representing the sensory, natural world and the number three, heavenly
purity, which may explain why Gafori mysteriously attributes the sixth mode to
‘the goddess’ or ‘feminine’ principle of nature. The three ‘pure’ emanations – the
Dorian mode in the centre, issuing forth from Melpomene, Urania, above the
planets and Thalia, below the earth – contain and divide the other six ‘sensuous’
ones into two triads. Wind suggests, ‘In the order of the Muses, the triad UraniaMelpomene-Thalia would then emanate from the dance of the Graces, while the
six intermediate Muses are “planted” in Apollo’s vase’.47 He adds that the names
of the Graces – in contemporary translations – also relate to the celestial sphere
(Euphrosyne/laetitia), the Sun (Aglaia/splendor) and the subterranean seeds of
music (Thalia/viriditas).
In this way, we can begin to see how this complex illustration is far more than
simply a diagrammatic representation of cosmic analogies. Its symbolic content, as
an expression of a Neoplatonic vision of an ensouled cosmos, is designed to waken
and set in motion the spiritual energy, emanating as musical harmony, from the
silent depths of nature. Like the Botticelli’s Primavera, albeit in a less sophisticated
way, it somehow stirs a perception of unity from deep within, in the manner of a
talisman. A final quotation from Gafori emphasises the spiritual implications of
his musica mundana, ‘Finally, we did not believe it should be passed over in silence
that musical systems contribute much to the perfection of virtue, which some call
divination because it is the greatest ornament and salvation for anyone’.48
From its humble beginnings in the solitary lyre-playing of Marsilio Ficino, the
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music of the spheres continued to be heard throughout the following century. For
Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535), whose Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1531)
provide a compendium of magical theory and techniques, Ficino’s sympathetic
magic and Gafori’s conception of cosmic harmony combine in a system of ritual
presided over by the Magus, who shapes and exploits the properties of music in
his quest for spiritual truth. In the field of practical music, the great intermedii
of the Medici court in Florence attempted to recreate the Platonic world of Ideal
forms on earth through arousing the wonder of the audience – the enormous
scale of the visual spectacle and musical forces were created with the purpose of
imitating perfect Beauty. On a smaller scale, the Hermetic revival in Elizabethan
England produced such exquisite music as that by John Dowland, whose seven
Lachrimae Pavans for viols and lute evoke the Neoplatonic descent and ascent
of the soul and in whose songs of deepest melancholy lies hidden the gold of the
philosophic Saturn.
With the Copernican revolution and the development of physics and
astronomy as independent from philosophy, cosmic music became increasingly
the domain of the esoteric scientist rather than the practical musician. Musica
mundana found itself incorporated into ever more complex systems dependent
on the unity of all universal elements, by such polymaths as Robert Fludd (15741637), Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) and Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680). But
despite the attempts of the Florentine Camerata at the beginning of the seventeenth
century to revive ancient Greek ideals of musical ethos, musica instrumentalis
gradually lost its philosophical justification and the Baroque characteristics of
formal structure, stylistic nuance and ornamental gesture determined composers’
intentions. In esoteric circles, divorced from the enlightened world of rationalism,
the invention and elaboration of musical systems explicitly related to occult
correspondences continued to be explored and enjoyed a revival in the Romantic
period. In the twentieth century, we may think of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925)
or G. I. Gurdjieff (1866-1949) as spokesmen for music as a spiritual discipline,
but we do not hear the music of the spheres anymore. The composer, Arnold
Schoenberg (1874-1951), at the beginning of this century ‘emancipated the
dissonance’, that is, freed the twelve-note chromatic scale from any notions of
internal hierarchy and made all notes equal.49 Similarly, we no longer have the
opportunity to distinguish between musical temperaments or the tuning systems
used for specific effects until the eighteenth century. Due to the innovations of J.
S. Bach (1685-1750), the music we hear is equally tempered – all perfect fourths
or fifths being smoothed away. Astrology too has suffered the fate of becoming
divorced from philosophy, forced to attempt to align itself with prevailing
The Music of the Spheres: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance HARMONIA
265
paradigms of scientific reality; in a period of confusion over the value of spiritual
experience, it is led to deny its roots in notio, a contact with the numinous which
precedes all processes of differentiation by the mind. However, as Ficino suggests,
there may be a very simple way for a human being to re-establish a connection
with these roots and once more lend an inner ear to the harmony of the spheres:
Whenever in your studies you make a serious attempt to postulate that there
are many angelic minds beyond heaven, like lights, whose ordering relates
them both to each other and to one God, the father of all lights, what will
be the point in pursuing your investigations down long winding paths? Just
look up at heaven, I pray, Oh citizen of the heavenly realm, at that heaven
whose manifestly perfect order so clearly declares God to be its creator.50
Notes
1. For a full analysis, see E. Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1980 [1958]), pp. 113-131.
2. See Marsilio Ficino, ‘De Christiana religione’ in Opera omnia (Basle, 1576), p.
1, as quoted in J. Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance (New York: Brill Academic
Publishing, 1991), p. 289.
3. Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, 1.3, trans. T. Taylor, in S. Ronan, ed., Iamblichus
of Chalcis, On the Mysteries = De mysteriis Aegyptiorum (Hastings: Chthonios Books,
1989), p. 24.
4. Ficino, Opera omnia, p. 944.
5. Marsilio Ficino, Liber de vita, III.20.36, in Marsilio Ficino, K. Caske and J.
Clark, Three Books on Life (Binghamton: MRTS 1989)., p. 351.
6. Plotinus, De rebus philosophicis libri LIIII f.222r, trans. Marsilio Ficino (Basle
1559), quoted in G. Tomlinson, Music in Renaissance Magic (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1993), p. 86.
7. Plato, Timaeus, trans. R. G. Bury (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard
University Press, 1931), 47b-e.
8. Boethius, De Institutione musica I.2, trans. C. Bower, in J. Godwin, ed., Music,
Mysticism and Magic (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), pp. 46-7.
9. See G. Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University,
1995), pp. 206-7.
10. Plato, Timaeus, 34a-36d.
11. Plato, Timaeus, 37a.
12. Plato, Timaeus, 42e-44c.
13. Quoted in Shaw, Theurgy, p. 214.
14. Plato, Republic, 2 Vols., trans. Paul Shorey, Cambridge Mass., London: Harvard
University Press, 1935, Republic, X.616-7.
15. Cicero, De Republica VI, quoted in Godwin, Music, p. 11.
16. Johannes Afflighemensis, De musica XVI, in C. Palisca, Hucbald, Guido and
John, On Music (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978), p. 110.
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Angela Voss
17. See J. C. Burgel, The Feather of Simurgh: the Licit Magic of the Arts in Medieval
Islam (New York: New York University Press, 1988).
18. G. Anselmi, De musica, in G. Massera, ed., Historiae Musicae Cultores 14
(Florence: Olschki, 1961), p. 150.
19. See Joscelyn Godwin, Harmonies of Heaven and Earth (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1987), p. 143.
20. B. Ramos de Pareja, Musica practica (Bolgna: Baltasar de Hiriberia, 1482), in J.
Wolf , repr. ed., (Leipzig: Brietkopf and Haertel, 1901), p. 59.
21. Ficino, Opera omnia, pp. 901-2: my translation.
22. A. Poliziano, Opere omnia (Basle: Nikolaus Bischoff Jr, 1553), p. 310.
23. Ficino, De vita, p. 355.
24. G. Pico della Mirandola, Conclusiones nongentae, A. Biondi, ed., (Florence:
Olschki, 1995), p. 121.
25. Ficino, De vita, p. 357.
26. Quoted in A. della Torre, Storia dell’Accademia Platonica (Florence: Tip. G.
Carnesecchi e figli,1902), p. 791.
27. Ficino, De vita, pp. 357-9.
28. Ficino, De vita 3.XXI, p. 361.
29. Ficino, De vita 3.XXI, p. 359.
30. Ficino, De vita 3.XXI, p. 359.
31. Ficino, De vita 3.XXI, p. 359.
32. Ficino, .De vita 3. XXII, p 365.
33. Ficino, De vita, p. 361.
34. Ficino, De vita, p. 363.
35. Marsilio Ficino, The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, trans. members of the School
of Economic Science, London, (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1975, 1978, 1981, 1988,
1994); Vol IV, pp. 60-1. Also see Ficino, De vita, 3VI. p. 275; 3.XXII. p. 365; 3.XXIV. p.
377; Ficino, Letters, vol. 1, p. 161, for Ficino’s discussion of planetary meanings.
36. Marsilio Ficino, ‘De rationibus musicae’, in P. O. Kristeller, ed., Supplementum
Ficinianum, vol. I (Florence: Olschki, 1937)., p. 55.
37. C. Ptolemy, ‘Harmonicorum sive de musica’, libri tres III. 16, in A. Barker, ed.,
Greek Musical Writings, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 275535.
38. Ficino, Opera omnia, p. 1615.
39. Ficino, ‘De rationibus’, pp. 55-6.
40. Ficino, ‘De rationibus’, pp. 55-6.
41. Ficino, ‘De rationibus’, pp. 55-6.
42. Ficino, ‘De rationibus’, pp. 55-6.
43. Ficino, ‘De rationibus’, pp. 55-6.
44. As frontispiece to F. Gaffurius, Practica musicae (Milan: Gulielmum signer
Rothomagensem, 1496), in I. Young, ed., (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969)
and in De harmonia musicorum instrumentorum opus (Milan: G. Pontanum, 1518),
trans. C. A. Miller (Neuhausen-Stuttgart: American Institute of Musicology/HänsslerVerlag, 1977)., p. 201.
45. Gaffurius, De harmonia, pp. 199-200.
46. For Wind’s analysis of this woodcut, see Wind, Mysteries , pp. 265-9.
47. Wind, Mysteries, p. 268.
48. Gaffurius, De harmonia, p. 210.
49. Hans W. Heinsheimer and Paul Stefan, ‘Gesinnung oder Erkenntnis’, 25 Jahre
The Music of the Spheres: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance HARMONIA
267
Neue Musik: Jahrbuch 1926 (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1926), trans. Leo Black as
‘Opinion or Insight’, in Style and Idea, Leonard Stein, ed., (London: Faber and Faber,
1975), pp. 258-64 at 260.
50. Marsilio Ficino, Liber de sole, (Opera Omnia), ch. II, trans. G. Cornelius, D.
Costello, G. Tobyn, A. Voss & V. Wells, Sphinx: A Journal for Archetypal Psychology, 6
(London Convivium for Archetypal Studies, 1994), p. 127.