The Mythic Origins of Western Music. Celestial Songs and the Harmony of the Spheres
By Ezra Sandzer-Bell It is the dead of night and silence permeates the cityscape, interrupted only by the occasional exhalation of a distant train. Ambient moonlight pours into bedroom windows. An ambulance races down the street, wailing like the sirens of ancient Greece. Philosophers used to gaze into the heavens on nights just like these, imagining a world of sound long before the advent of orchestral music. They watched patiently as each planet journeyed around the sky in orbit. The cycle of each astral body created a distinct musical tone, like fingertips along the rim of a wine glass. If you could hear them all together, the planets would have resonated with a sweet celestial harmony. Science has demonstrated that the pitch of a musical tone is determined by the frequency of acoustic wave-cycles per second. This same knowledge was taught in the secret societies of ancient Greek civilization, framed in an astrological context called the Harmony of the Spheres. Sound waves were represented by planetary orbit all the way through the Middle Ages and Renaissance period, as a layered hierarchy of celestial beings extending from Earth to Heaven. According to tradition, before and after death each human soul journeyed through…
