Music, Science and the Natural Order of the Universe by Jamie James Review By: Ivan Hewett Source: the Musical Times, Vol
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Review Reviewed Work(s): The Music of the Spheres: Music, Science and the Natural Order of the Universe by Jamie James Review by: Ivan Hewett Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 135, No. 1817 (Jul., 1994), pp. 454-455 Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1003258 Accessed: 25-06-2017 15:44 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Musical Times Publications Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Musical Times This content downloaded from 78.33.29.103 on Sun, 25 Jun 2017 15:44:48 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms S- * rxjA~ 0 Reviews S THE MUSIC OF THEfar short of theSPHERES: true realities - the real rel- MUSIC, minuet by comparing its motions to that SCIENCE AND THE NATURAL ORDER OF ative velocities, in the world of pure of the heavens. Music theorists now THE UNIVERSE number and all perfect geometrical have to look elsewhere to explain Jamie James figures, of the movements which carry music's power to move the soul. Little, Brown and Company (London, round 1994); the bodies involved in them. For James the Romantic era represents xv 262pp; ?18.99. ISBN 0 316 90906 8.These, you will agree, are conceived the by Fall that follows the Golden Age. reason and thought, not seen by the eye.'Man now becomes the measure of all James describes his book as 'an anecdotal It's a beguiling myth, and from things, and music and science lose touch history of the symphony of science and its Pythagoras onwards the system was with the notion of cosmic harmony. counterpart, the wisdom of music'. It passed down through Plato, the neo- From now on they pursue different ends, sounds modest, but behind the breezy style Platonics, the Roman rhetoricians and the both equally trivial. It's at this point that you can hear the deeper undertones of ascholastics - up to the Renaissance and James's argument goes seriously off the familiar myth being retold - that of the beyond. But it wasn't the same system in rails. He says that 'The history of Golden Age followed by the Fall. all respects, despite its appeal to science is the continuing process of the Although James says in the preface to his immutable, timeless mathematical truths. widening gulf between the ideals and the book that 'I am not a believer in the There were awkward gaps in the system, practice of science.' But surely it would golden age', it soon becomes clear that and for the maths didn't always quite work. be truer to say exactly the opposite; that him the 2000-year period from Pythagoras As the art of polyphony developed in the only in recent times has science to Kepler was indeed a kind of Golden Christian Church, so the Pythagorean approached its own ideal of being Age for both music and science. system had to be considerably stretched to testable and therefore corrigible. James It's no accident that they flourished embrace it. James recounts the vicissi- is gripped by the Pythagorean myth - and together because, according to James, tudes of the Great Theme with an who can blame him? - but myths can't be they were in essence one and the engaginglysame light touch, and has a gift tested, for and so have nothing to do with thing. What united them was their reducinglofty a tangled theoretical controversy science. He also makes the mistake of purpose, which was to reveal the orderli- to its bare, vivid essentials. He takes confounding care science with the technolo- ness of God's cosmos to man. Music was to point up the parallel difficulties gies inthat it has spawned, and then the deciphering of divine harmony as itastronomy, where from Ptolemy onwards berating science for the trivial uses to revealed itself in sound. Science was the astronomers had to exert a great dealwhich of the technologies are put. deciphering of the same harmony as ingenuityit to 'save the appearances', As for music, James takes the gloomy revealed itself in the heavens. Harmony square the observed data with what the view that its history, too, can be described was the visible or aural expression of theory of 'perfect' circular motion predict- as the divergence - leading to a yawning number, which, according to Pythagoras, ed. The tradition reaches its baroque gulf - between ideals and practice. The was at the root of all things. The number climax with the astronomer Kepler, who bleakness of this view is clearly more than one expressed unity, persistence in identi- gets a whole, brilliantly written chapter to he can bear, because he makes strenuous ty, immutability; two expressed himself. Kepler made efforts to mod- efforts to trace a continuing Pythagorean dichotomy and mutability; add these ernise the Pyathagoreans, who he said tradition running as it were underground, together and you get three, which under- 'were so addicted to this kind of philoso- in opposition to the 'official' romantic ide- lies all things that have beginnings, phizing in numbers... that they failed to ology of self-absorption and middles and ends; four was the number of keep the judgement of their ears.' His self-expression. It's a rather motley crew points required to describe the simplest ingenious solution was say that for every who make up this samizdat Pythagorean perfect solid. Add four, three, two and consonance there corresponded a perfect tradition of modern times; Newton, the one and you get ten, the most sacred polygon, one that could be constructed young Mozart of II sogno di Scipio (but number to Pythagoreans. with a compass and ruler. Those that not the older one of Figaro), Schoenberg All this of course, had precious little to cannot are 'abominations', and the (for his numerology), Hindemith (for his do with music as it was actually played musical intervals that correspond to them moralistic harmonic system), Philip Glass, and sung. That was for mere 'cantores', (the heptagon intervals of 1:7 and 6:7) are and Stockhausen. (who can be used to who were judged, by the sages who elabo- likewise abominable and cacophonous. support any dotty cause). As the tradition rated James's 'Great Theme', to be on a But alas, just as the stubborn facts of goes underground it loses its luminous par with jugglers and acrobats. Music was the heavens caused the downfall of rigour and slides into mystification, a to be thought and meditated on, not Pythagorean astronomy, so the Greatchange mirrored exactly in James's book. played. Likewise astronomy had little to Theme in music was driven out byHe can'tthe resist seeing evidence for this do with observation, because as Plato reality of music, which by now was underground alto- tradition everywhere; for said, the heavenly bodies 'are still part of gether worldly in its aims. It's simply example, the phrase 'alles ist hin' (all is the visible world, and therefore they fall no good trying to explain a Mozart lost) in Schoenberg's second quartet he 454 The Musical Times July 1994 This content downloaded from 78.33.29.103 on Sun, 25 Jun 2017 15:44:48 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 0 C I:ms Reviews 0 1 takes to to refer refer to ato key a keystage stage in the in alchem- the alchem- NEW MUSICAL FIGURATIONS: interstices ofof hishis analysis.analysis. For For example, example, he he ical process.process. It's It's all deeplyall deeply unconvincing, unconvincing, ANTHONY BRAXTON'S CULTURAL shows thatthat byby bringingbringing tonalitytonality 'in 'in and and out out though highly highly entertaining. entertaining. CRITIQUE of focus' in his bebop-derived The irony, irony, though, though, is that is thatthere's there's no Ronald no M. Radano Composition 6, Braxton is deliberately need for James to make dubious claims Chicago UP (Chicago & London, 1993); mediating between traditions previously about an underground continuation of the 315pp; ? . ISBN 0 22670 196 4. thought of as racially distinct. This ability Great Theme, because the tradition actu- to relate social concepts to the notes them- ally continues above ground in full view. Anthony Braxton has a formidable repu- selves recalls the verve of Theodor The Romantics weren't just interested intation among new music listeners. HisAdorno discussing Schoenberg or Mahler. self-expression for its own sake; they recorded work - vast in ambition and Cultural studies gurus like Simon Frith were interested in it because they scope, scarcely a redundant piece ofand Dick Hebdige make non-classical believed the self and nature to be myste- music in a discography of over sixty music worthy of academic study by sub- riously intertwined. Exploring self and albums - looms as one of the few gen-jecting it to sociology. Pop music becomes exploring nature were, according to the uine encounters between classical music an aspect of youth or minority 'resistance'. romantic philosopher CG Carus, one and and jazz. Initially inspired by what any If music fails to reach the mass market it is the same thing. The key to their view of black youngster could hear in the judged irrelevant: the avantgarde drops the universe was the idea of plenitude, Chicago of the 50s, Braxton was radi- from view.