The Music of the Spheres, or the Metaphysics of Music

ISI.ORG ^ | Fall 2001 | Robert R. Reilly

[cornelis]

THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES, OR
THE METAPHYSICS OF MUSIC

. . . According to tradition, the harmonic structure of music was discovered by Pythagoras about the fifth century B.C. Pythagoras experimented with a stretched piece of cord. When plucked, the cord sounded a certain note. When halved in length and plucked again, the cord sounded a higher note completely consonant with the first. In fact, it was the same note at a higher pitch. Pythagoras had discovered the ration 2:1, of the octave. Further experiments, plucking the strings two-thirds of its original length produced a perfect fifth in the ratio of 3:2. When a three-quarters length of cord was plucked, a perfect fourth was sounded in the ratio of 4:3, and so forth. These sounds were all consonant and extremely pleasing to the ear. The significance that Pythagoras attributed to this discovery cannot be overestimated. Pythagoras thought that number was the key to the universe . . . As Aristotle explained in the Metaphysics, the Pythagoreans "supposed the elements of numbers to be the elements of all things, and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a number." This was meant literally. The heavenly spheres and their rotations through the sky produced tones at various levels, and in concert, these tones made a harmonious sound that man's music, at its best, could approximate. Music was number made audible. Music was man's participation in the harmony of the universe.

This discovery was fraught with ethical significance. By participating in heavenly harmony, music could induce spiritual harmony in the soul . . .

The systematic fragmentation of music was the logical working out of the premise that music is not governed by mathematical relationships and laws that inhere in the structure of a hierarchical and ordered universe, but is wholly constructed by man and therefore essentially without limits or definition. Tonality, as the pre-existing principle of order in the world of sound, goes the same way as the objective moral order . . .

If there is no pre-existing intelligible order to go out to and apprehend, and to search through for what lies beyond it--which is the Creator--what then is music supposed to express? If external order does not exist, then music turns inward. It collapses on itself and becomes an obsession with technique. Any ordering of things, musical or otherwise, becomes simply the whim of man's will . . .

What was needed, according to John Cage (1912-1992), was to have absolutely no organization . . . He presented concerts of kitchen sounds and the sounds of the human body amplified through loudspeakers. Perhaps Cage's most notorious work was his 4'33'' during which the performer silently sits with his instrument for that exact period of time, then rises and leaves the stage. The "music" is whatever extraneous noises the audience hears in the silence the performer has created. In his book Silence, Cage announced, "here we are. Let us say Yes to our presence together in Chaos."

What was the purpose of all this? Precisely to make the point that there is no purpose, or to express what Cage called a "purposeful purposelessness," the aim of which was to emancipate people from the tyranny of meaning.

With his noise, Cage worked out musically the full implications of Rousseau's non-teleological view of nature in his Second Discourse. Cage did for music what Rousseau did for political philosophy. Perhaps the most profoundly anti-Aristotelian philosopher of the eighteenth century, Rousseau turned Aristotle's notion of nature on its head. Aristotle said that nature defined not only what man is, but what he should be. Rousseau countered that nature is not an end--a telos--but a beginning: man's end is his beginning. There is nothing he "ought" to become, no moral imperative. There is no purpose in man or nature; existence is therefore bereft of any rational principle. Rousseau asserted that man by nature was not a social or political animal endowed with reason. What man has become is the result, not of nature, but of accident. And the society resulting from that accident has corrupted man.

According to Rousseau, man was originally isolated in the state of nature, where the pure "sentiment of his own existence" was such that "one suffices to oneself, like god." Yet this self-satisfied god was asocial and pre-rational. Only by accident did man come into association with others. Somehow, this accident ignited his reason. Through his association with others, man lost his self-sufficient "sentiment of his own existence." He became alienated. He began to live in the esteem of others instead of in his own self-esteem.

Rousseau knew that the pre-rational asocial state of nature was lost forever, but thought that an all-powerful state could ameliorate the situation of alienated man. The state could restore a simulacrum of that original well-being by removing all man's subsidiary social relationships. By destroying man's familial, social, and political ties, the state could make each individual totally dependent on the state, and independent of each other. The state is the vehicle for bringing people together so that they can be apart: a sort of radical individualism under state sponsorship.

It is necessary to pay this much attention to Rousseau because Cage shares his denigration of reason, the same notion of alienation, and a similar solution to it. In both men, the primacy of the accidental eliminates nature as a normative guide and becomes the foundation for man's total freedom. Like Rousseau's man in the state of nature, Cage said, "I strive toward the non-mental." The quest is to "provide a music free from one's memory and imagination." If man is the product of accident, his music should likewise be accidental. Life itself is very fine "once one gets one's mind and one's desires out of the way and lets it act of its own accord."

link to pdf

[cornelis]

Meaning lies in the logical world, not the artistic world

This view is what creates egotism in art. It is also where the term "abstract" comes into play. It is abstract from the order we all live in. Meaning may be a term that is used in other fields, but the less an art world relates to the world we live in, the less meaningful it becomes. It may be that the work of art has a high degree of self-referential complexity, but its significance is unnecessary. This also is part of the dehumanization of art.

[cornelis]

Sorry, typo: Renaissance, with one n.

[Savage Beast]

Probably, if I spent 10 years on Hamlet I'd manage to figure it out. But since I'd much rather do a thousand zillion other things, I want someone who has spent 10 years on it to explain it to me. Then I can get it in a reasonably rapid run-through.

It's true that some things are deliberately obsure, or private, or elitist, and they probably wouldn't interest you or me anyway, since this probably means an inferior mind created them.

But fine art probably can't be paraphrased. I don't think Falkner or Wagner or Van Gogh could have said it any other way. Wagner tried--and he failed miserably (his poetry, e.g.). What the Victory of Samothrace says cannot be described--or said in any other way.

It may not be true that hard work is required for all good things. I don't think it is. "The moon belongs to everyone! The best things in life" etc. And love can come to everyone.... You know what I mean.

Some fabulous things are easy. Thucydides for example. The ceiling of The Sistine Chapel. Leontyne Price singing Deep River (though I guess Leontyne and whoever composed Deep River worked pretty hard, huh? Michelangelo too? Thucydides?)(Maybe I'm wrong.)

And if I can con somebody into explaining to me what James Joyce is all about, or what to look for in Picasso or Mahler, I might be able to get it without much hard work.

The world is so full of wonderfulness! It's enough to make you dizzy. Just think of all the fun and all the wonderful people we meet and all we learn here at FR! And that doesn't take any hard work at all!

(I'm like lightening: I'll take the path of least resistance. I'm afraid the analogy ends there though.)

[RightWhale]

the less an art world relates to the world we live in, the less meaningful it becomes

There are two worlds. One is the world we see and hear through our senses. The other is the legal world. Which is the real world?
Or, there are two worlds. One is the world of the inner, higher self. The other is the world of disconnected, random events around us. Which is the real world?
Or, there are two worlds. One is the world of thought, logic, and order, of attempted communication of meaning through language. The other is the world of feelings, emotions, reactions, communication through psychological responses. Which is the real world?

We could memorize baseball statistics and study cosmology and opera lyrics. Or we could play ball, go stargazing, and go see Les Mis. Which is art? Both?

[T. P. Pole]

Couldn't you just give me a ring?

I guess I could, but wouldn't a Cage ring last about 16 months?

[oyez]

Having read Faulkner's Sanctuary twice and portions of the work numerous times, I don't think I want it explained. From time to time a light bulb comes on in my brain and a revelation comes to me about some passage. This keeps the literary work alive for me. I think S & F has the same quality. I havn't yet given the attention to it that I plan to. Ulysses , forget it. I.m not ready for madness.

[cornelis]

Some fabulous things are easy. Thucydides for example

LOL, translated into Ebonic?

But you're right again, not all things come through hard work, as long as we are agreed that this holds from the viewpoint of a passive observer. It seems that the sense perception is amazingly passive. Ancient arts of expression, especially what has remained because of its significance, was not devoted to them as today. The generalization that all things come through hard work can be quickly forgotten, especially with such spell-binding phrases from Mozart or Schubert.

[driftless]

Thanks for the praise, but I believe it's Orwell's.

[driftless]

Well I did see a documentary about Cage once, and I remember him saying that one note has no more importance than another. I think he believed in the theory of the blank slate or tabula rasa . In other words he didn't seem to believe in the idea of any inherent hard-wired music system in humans. I believe otherwise.

[Nebullis]

Some people are musically highly gifted and can imagine sounds not played on instruments. Or sounds for which current instruments don't yet exist. Cage may have been a transition between traditional instruments and newly invented instruments. Now highly evolved soundscapes and interactive instruments are available to the musician. But don't mistake, they are highly dependent on mathematics and don't make a leap away from nature. (No abuse of reason!)

As music develops into areas of specialty and areas requiring training or great musical intelligence, it doesn't lose its musicality or art.

[Nebullis]

Interesting article by Dmitri Tymoczko in Boston Review: The Sound of Philosophy-- The musical ideas of Milton Babbitt and John Cage

[Borges]

"Schoenberg, and others like them are musical frauds and dead-ends like (c)rap "music".

Don't listen to much Schoenberg do you?