When Zeus is boasting to Orestes of how he created the world and made everything within it, he says, “Hear the music of the spheres, that vast, mineral hymn of praise, sounding and resounding to the limits of the firmament” (116). It’s a brief mention, but the music of the spheres is a fascinating philosophical concept that invites more analysis.
According to Merriam Webster, the music of the spheres is “an ethereal harmony thought by the Pythagoreans to be produced by the vibration of the celestial spheres.” Pythagoras was a philosopher and mathematician who settled in Crotone, a Dorian Greek colony in southern Italy, in 529 BCE. He and his disciples promoted the ideals of asceticism, secrecy, music, and cleanliness. Among their mathematical treatises and expositions, they focused on music and the solar system. According to the legend, Pythagoras was passing by a smithy when he was struck by the harmonies pleasing to Greeks (the octave, fifth and fourth) created when two hammers of different weights struck the anvil. He began to consider the concepts of musical order, beauty, and the universe itself. He believed that ten spheres in the solar system revolved in a circular motion around a central fire and that each sphere made a sound; closer spheres had lower tones and the farther ones moved faster and thus had higher-pitched sounds. When these tones were combined they made what was referred to as the music of the spheres. Scholar Robert Reilly explained, “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.” In addition, scholar David Plant writes, “The Pythagoreans used music to heal the body and to elevate the soul, yet they believed that earthly music was no more than a faint echo of the universal 'harmony of the spheres.' In ancient cosmology, the planetary spheres ascended from Earth to Heaven like the rungs of a ladder. Each sphere was said to correspond to a different note of a grand musical scale. The particular tones emitted by the planets depended upon the ratios of their respective orbits, just as the tone of a lyre-string depended upon its length. Another type of celestial scale related the planetary tones to their apparent rates of rotation around the Earth. The music of the spheres was never a fixed system of correspondences.”
The concept appeared in major texts not long after its formulation. In The Republic, Plato wrote, “Upon each of its circles stood a siren who was carried round with its movements, uttering the concords of a single scale.” Plato also referred to music and astronomy as ”sister sciences.” Johannes Kepler wrote in Harmonice Munde that God harmonized the heavenly motions “to erect the magnificent edifice of the harmonic system of the musical scale.” The Roman philosopher Boethius wrote, “Music is related not only to speculation but to morality as well, for nothing is more consistent with human nature than to be soothed by sweet modes or disturbed by their opposites. Thus we can begin to understand the apt doctrine of Plato, which holds that the whole Universe is united by musical concord.” Others who took up this idea in their writing included Ptolemy, Pliny, and Cicero.
The concept filtered into the design of the Gothic cathedrals of medieval Europe, which were meant to conform to the principles of musical and geometry harmony. Over time, the music of the spheres became more of a poetic/literary conceit rather than a literal, scientific one; regardless, it remains inspiring and thought-provoking.
