Full Description
This is the first volume to explore the reception of the Pythagorean doctrine of cosmic harmony within a variety of contexts, ranging chronologically from Plato to 18th-century England. This original collection of essays engages with contemporary debates concerning the relationship between music, philosophy, and science, and challenges the view that Renaissance discussions on cosmic harmony are either mere repetitions of ancient music theory or pre-figurations of the 'Scientific Revolution'. Utilizing this interdisciplinary approach, Renaissance Conceptions of Cosmic Harmony offers a new perspective on the reception of an important classical theme in various cultural, sequential and geographical contexts, underlying the continuities and changes between Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This project will be of particular interest within these emerging disciplines as they continue to explore the ideological significance of the various ways in which we appropriate the past.
Contents
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
Introduction
Jacomien Prins and Maude Vanhaelen
Part I: Ancient and Medieval sources
1. Eight Singing Sirens: Heavenly Harmonies in Plato and the Neoplatonists
Francesco Pelosi
2. Latin and Arabic Ideas of Sympathetic Vibration as the Causes of Effects between Heaven and Earth
Charles Burnett
3. Theory of Cosmic Harmony in Jewish and Muslim Sources
Amnon Shiloah
4. Medieval Variations on a Cosmic Theme
Gabriela Currie
5. "Therout com so gret a noyse": The Harmony of the Spheres and Chaucerian Poetics
Wolfram Keller
Part II: The Revival of the Doctrine of the Pythagorean Harmony of the Universe in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-century Italy and Germany
6. Cosmic Harmony, Demons, and the Mnemonic Power of Music in Renaissance Florence: The Case of Marsilio Ficino
Maude Vanhaelen
7. Francesco Giorgi on the Harmony of the Creation and the Catholic Censorship of His Views
Leen Spruit
8. Francesco Patrizi and the 'Weakest Echo of the Harmony of the Spheres'
Jacomien Prins
9. The Reception of Ficino's Theory of World Harmony in Germany
Grantley McDonald
Part III: The Tradition of the Harmony of the Spheres in Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-centuries Europe and New Spain
10. Cosmic Play in a Symbolic Harmonic Universe: The Reception of Cusanus and Kircher in Seventeenth-century New Spain
Linda Baez-Rubi
11. Andrea Torelli and His Orphic Lyre
Concetta Pennuto
12. The Harmony of the Spheres in English Musical Mathematics, 1650-1750
Benjamin Wardhaugh
13. William Stukeley's 'Music of the Spheres' Manuscript: Ancient Wisdom and Modern Newtonianism, c. 1720
Tom Dixon
Bibliography and Further Reading
Index
Entry
