MISCELLANEOUS, INCLUDING PYTHAGOREANISM AND SHAKESPEARE'S ACCOUNT OF
THE MORE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF MUSIC
A well-known passage in _Twelfth Night_ gives us the Opinion of
Pythagoras 'concerning wild-fowl.'
The Opinion of Pythagoras 'concerning Music' is at least equally
interesting, and is appropriated and assimilated by Shakespeare. The
particular branch of the Pythagorean system with which we are
concerned, is that which treats of the Music of the Spheres. Besides
the two passages here quoted, there are others dealing with this
subject--_e.g._,
_Ant._ V, ii, 84, 'the tunèd spheres'; _Twelf._ III, i, 115, 'music
from the spheres'; _Per._ V, i, 226, 'The music of the spheres.'
'This, Pythagoras, first of all the Greeks [560 B.C.] conceived in his
mind; and understood that the spheres sounded something concordant,
because of the necessity of proportion, which never forsakes celestial
beings.'[22]
[Footnote 22: Hist. of Philos., by Thomas Stanley, edit. 1701.]
'Pythagoras, by musical proportion, calleth that a tone, by how much
the moon is distant from the earth: from the moon to Mercury the half
of that space, and from Mercury to Venus almost as much; from Venus to
the Sun, sesquiple [_i.e._, half as much more as a tone]; from the Sun
to Mars, a tone, that is as far as the moon is from the earth: from
Mars to Jupiter, half, and from Jupiter to Saturn, half, and thence to
the zodiac, sesquiple.'
'Thus there are made _seven tones_, which they call a _diapason_
harmony, that is, an _universal concent_, in which Saturn moves in the
Doric mood, Jupiter in the Phrygian, and in the rest the like.'
'Those sounds which the seven planets, and the sphere of fixed stars,
and that which is above us, termed by them Antichton [opposite the
earth], make, Pythagoras affirmed to be the Nine Muses; but the
composition and symphony ... he named Mnemosyne [Memory, the Mother of
the Muses].'
Censorinus, a Roman Grammarian, B.C. 238, in his book De Die Natali,
says--
'To these things we may add what Pythagoras taught, namely, that the
whole world was constructed according to musical ratio, and that the
seven planets ... have a rhythmical motion and distances adapted to
musical intervals, and emit sounds, every one different in proportion
to its height [Saturn was said to be the highest, as it is the
farthest away, and was supposed to give the gravest note of the
heavenly Diapason, which note was therefore called Hypate, or
'highest'], which sounds are so concordant as to produce a most sweet
melody, though _inaudible to us by reason of the greatness of the
sounds_, which the narrow passages of our ears are not capable of
admitting.'
These extracts fairly represent the ancient opinion about the Music of
the spheres. There was a strong tendency last century to revive the
notion, and even to our modern ideas, with our Copernican astronomy,
there remains at least the possibility of drawing fantastical
analogies between the proportionate distances of the planets and the
proportionate vibration numbers of the partial tones in a musically
vibrating string or pipe.
The idea of the musical Chorus or dance of the heavenly bodies was
perfectly familiar to all writers in the 16th and 17th centuries. An
excellent example is in Paradise Lost, Book V., in the twelve lines
beginning 'So spake the Omnipotent.' Even finer is the 13th verse of
the Nativity Hymn.
'Ring out, ye crystal spheres,
Once bless our human ears,
If ye have power to touch our senses so;
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time,
And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow;
And, with your nine-fold harmony,
Make up full concert to the angelic symphony.'
No one could help thinking of the text in Job xxxviii. 7, 'When the
morning stars sang together,' in this connection, and Milton naturally
refers to it in the previous verse.
Here follow the two Shakespeare extracts. The second one is full of
beauty of every kind, but the Pythagoreanism is in the last six lines,
with Shakespeare's own view about _why_ we cannot hear the heavenly
music.
_As You Like It_ II, vii, 5.
_Duke Senior_ [of Jaques].
If he, _compact of jars_, grow musical,
We shall have shortly _discord in the spheres_.
_Merchant_ V, i, 51.
_Lor._ My friend Stephano, signify, I pray you,
Within the house, your mistress [Portia] is at hand;
And _bring your music forth into the air_.
[_Exit_ STEPHANO.
(Lorenzo and Jessica alone.)
_Lor._ How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here we will sit, and _let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night,
Become the touches of sweet harmony_.
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