LA MUSIQUE DES SPHERESLA MUSIQUE DES SPHERES

de Pythagore à Voyager II

THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERESTHE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

from Pythagoras to Voyager-II

Dominique Proust

(Observatoire de Meudon, France)

De Pythagore qui expliquait la mécanique céleste cinq siècles avant notre ère en associant à chaque planète une note de la gamme aux sondes spatiales Voyager transportant des témoignages musicaux de notre monde vers d'hypothétiques civilisations dans les profondeurs interstellaires la dualité du cosmos et de la musique défie le temps. Des anciens grecs aux néoplatoniciens, du haut Moyen-âge à Copernic, Kepler, Galilée, du Siècle des Lumières à la période contemporaine, c'est dans cette analogie que notre monde semble avoir puisé une bonne partie de ses conceptions de l'Univers.

From Pythagoras who tried to find a general theory of the World, until now, many musicians have raised the ideas of the Harmony of the World taking inspiration from the celestial mechanics. Conversely, many astronomers were interested by the musical harmonics relations e.g. the musical scale, to explain the movements of the planets. Through the History, old greeks such as Pythagoras, Platon, Ptolemee, medieval astronomers and neoplatonicians, then Copernic, Kepler, Galilee, explained the universe with a musical, harmonic concept. More recently, the first cosmologists such as William Herschel, until the contemporary period have associated musical (harmonic) principles (e.g. the Bode's law). To-day, the two spacecrafts Voyager transport a videodisk containing Earth musical samples as a universal language with hypothetic extraterrestrial civilizations.

Franchino Gaffurio:

Pitagora, disegno daTheorica Musicae. (1492)

Music of the Spheres (Salzburg, ~ 820 A.D.)

Boèce (480-524), De Institutione Musica

Hildegarde von Bingen (1098-1179) Scivias: vision of the cosmos.

Nicolas Oresme (1320-1382) , Book of the Sky and the World, 1377.

The tree of the science

The Trivium is represented with dialectic, grammar and rethoric, then the Quadrivium with Geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy.

XIIth century Hymn: Naturalis Concordia Vocum Cum Planetis.

Practica musicae(Franchini Gaffurio,

1451-1522).

Directly inspired fromMartanus Capella (470)and the neoplatonician

School.

8 spheres are associatedto 8 of the muses (Thalie,

muse of the comedy isnot included.

The system of Ptolemee (Harmponia Macroscomica, Andreas Cellarius, 1667)

The system of Copernic (Harmonia Macroscomica, Andreas Cellarius 1667)

Tian Tan: Tian Tan: The Temple of the The Temple of the

Celestial Harmony (1420)Celestial Harmony (1420)

(Beijing)(Beijing)

Tian TanTian Tan: Le Temple de : Le Temple de

l’Harmonie Céleste (1420)l’Harmonie Céleste (1420)

(Pékin)(Pékin)

Kepler’s musical themes for each planet (Harmonices Mundi, 1619).

Le cosmos du XVIIe siècle est ordonné suivant une hiérarchie

Traité de l’eau de vie (Jean Brouaut, 1646)

Hermès Trismégiste is represented holding the sphere of the world in his right hand while the left one is holding a distillator.

The seven organ pipes represent the seven planets (including the Moon).

Robert Fludd’s Divine Monochord (Utriusque cosmi, Francfort, 1617)

Athanase KircherAthanase Kircher

Musurgia Universalis, 1650

God is the builder of an organ which represents the world. The 6 stops correspond to the 6 days of the creation.

Marin Mersenne,

L’Harmonie Universelle, 1636

The three-strings instrument used by Marin Mersenne to study the relationship between the length of the string and the tune.

One of the telescopes built by William Herschel

nD = 0.4 + (0.3 2 )

Bode’s law

Regulated air blowing pump constructed by the organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll for Léon Foucault’s light velocity experiments at Paris Observatory.

Voyager spacecraft

The accoustic waves