The Harmony of the Spheres: The Pythagorean Tradition in Music

by Joscelyn Godwin

Professor of Music at Colgate University and a widely respected musicologist, Godwin traces the history of the idea, held since ancient times, that the whole cosmos, with its circling planets and stars, is in some way a musical or harmonious entity. The author shows how this concept has continued to inspire philosophers, astronomers, and mystics from antiquity to the present day.

Genres: Music, Philosophy, Esoterica, History, Science, Nonfiction

512 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1992

About the author

Composer, musicologist and translator, known for his work on ancient music, paganism and music in the occult.

Reviews

[Jimmy Ele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indispensable amount of information gathered on the ideas throughout recorded history on what very adept and erudite philosophers have thought about the idea of the Harmony of the Spheres. Highly recommended for those curious about these ideas and their connections within philosophy and even science. This is going in my foundational shelf on GoodReads and I am keeping it in constant rotation on Scribd so as to go back and be inspired by quotes or to build on the foundational ideas.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gave a pretty thought-provoking look at pre-Enlightenment thinking, which seemed oddly content to search for meaning solely through correlations between seemingly unrelated things. The idea that the notes of the musical scale corresponded to the movements of the planets simply because there appeared to be similarities in the proportions between the notes of the scale that matched the proportions between the planets gripped the human imagination for centuries. Similarly, the best thinkers of antiquity inferred that a mathematical structure mirroring the structure of the planets and of musical moved the human soul according to its temperament.

While the premise of the book is fascinating, and raises interesting questions about the nature and source of human knowledge, it is tiringly academic in nature, and many of the sources that it cites are redundant. I started skimming halfway through.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This ranks as one of the most diffcult books I've ever read. Learned definitely but much of the materialwas too abstract out of context. I did enjoy it though.