VI Miscellaneous, including Pythagoreanism and Shakespeare's Account of the More Spiritual Side of Music

A well-known passage in Twelfth Night gives us the Opinion of Pythagoras 'concerning wild-fowl.'

The Opinion of Pythagoras 'concerning Music' is at least equally interesting, and is appropriated and assimilated by Shakespeare. The particular branch of the Pythagorean system with which we are concerned, is that which treats of the Music of the Spheres. Besides the two passages here quoted, there are others dealing with this subject—e.g.,

Ant. V, ii, 84, 'the tunÈd spheres'; Twelf. III, i, 115, 'music from the spheres'; Per. V, i, 226, 'The music of the spheres.'

'This, Pythagoras, first of all the Greeks [560 b.c.] conceived in his mind; and understood that the spheres sounded something concordant, because of the necessity of proportion, which never forsakes celestial beings.'[22]

'Pythagoras, by musical proportion, calleth that a tone, by how much the moon is distant from the earth: from the moon to Mercury the half of that space, and from Mercury to Venus almost as much; from Venus to the Sun, sesquiple [i.e., half as much more as a tone]; from the Sun to Mars, a tone, that is as far as the moon is from the earth: from Mars to Jupiter, half, and from Jupiter to Saturn, half, and thence to the zodiac, sesquiple.'

'Thus there are made seven tones, which they call a diapason harmony, that is, an universal concent, in which Saturn moves in the Doric mood, Jupiter in the Phrygian, and in the rest the like.'

'Those sounds which the seven planets, and the sphere of fixed stars, and that which is above us, termed by them Antichton [opposite the earth], make, Pythagoras affirmed to be the Nine Muses; but the composition and symphony ... he named Mnemosyne [Memory, the Mother of the Muses].'

Censorinus, a Roman Grammarian, b.c. 238, in his book De Die Natali, says—

'To these things we may add what Pythagoras taught, namely, that the whole world was constructed according to musical ratio, and that the seven planets ... have a rhythmical motion and distances adapted to musical intervals, and emit sounds, every one different in proportion to its height [Saturn was said to be the highest, as it is the farthest away, and was supposed to give the gravest note of the heavenly Diapason, which note was therefore called Hypate, or 'highest'], which sounds are so concordant as to produce a most sweet melody, though inaudible to us by reason of the greatness of the sounds, which the narrow passages of our ears are not capable of admitting.'

These extracts fairly represent the ancient opinion about the Music of the spheres. There was a strong tendency last century to revive the notion, and even to our modern ideas, with our Copernican astronomy, there remains at least the possibility of drawing fantastical analogies between the proportionate distances of the planets and the proportionate vibration numbers of the partial tones in a musically vibrating string or pipe.

The idea of the musical Chorus or dance of the heavenly bodies was perfectly familiar to all writers in the 16th and 17th centuries. An excellent example is in Paradise Lost, Book V., in the twelve lines beginning 'So spake the Omnipotent.' Even finer is the 13th verse of the Nativity Hymn.

'Ring out, ye crystal spheres, Once bless our human ears, If ye have power to touch our senses so; And let your silver chime Move in melodious time, And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow; And, with your nine-fold harmony, Make up full concert to the angelic symphony.'

No one could help thinking of the text in Job xxxviii. 7, 'When the morning stars sang together,' in this connection, and Milton naturally refers to it in the previous verse.

Here follow the two Shakespeare extracts. The second one is full of beauty of every kind, but the Pythagoreanism is in the last six lines, with Shakespeare's own view about why we cannot hear the heavenly music.

As You Like It II, vii, 5.

Merchant V, i, 51.

This is finer than Pythagoras.

The next three passages are concerned with the 'fantasie' of Music. Jaques gives an opinion in a general form—viz., that the musician's 'melancholy' is 'fantastical'; Mariana and the Duke speak of a certain doubleness that may be noticed in the action of music on the mind. Jessica is 'never merry' when she hears sweet music: Lorenzo descants on the evident effects of music on even hardened natures; while Portia and Nerissa preach a neat little sermon on the text 'Nothing is good without respect,' with musical illustrations of the powerful influence of time and place—e.g., the silence of night, makes the music sound sweeter than by day; the crow sings as well as the lark, if the circumstances favour the crow, or if the lark is not present to give immediate comparison; and even the nightingale's song is no better than the wren's, 'by day, when every goose is cackling.'

As You IV, i, 13.

Measure for Measure IV, i, 12. Enter Duke, disguised as a friar (after Song).

Mariana. I cry you mercy, sir; and well could wish
You had not found me here so musical:
Let me excuse me, and believe me so,
My mirth it much displeased, but pleas'd my woe.
Duke. 'Tis good: though music oft hath such a charm,
To make bad good, and good provoke to harm.