Download Spheres Notes May 2016

Harmony of the Spheres
Program Notes May 14, 2016
Music, because of its ratios, intervals and modes, was essential to the cosmic system. Plato’s Timeus says that
the natural musical ratios of 2:1 (octave), 3:2 (fifth), and 4:3 (fourth) match the divisions of the “world-soul.”
Plato, Pliny, Macrobius and other ancient writers transmitted the idea that the distances between the planets
could be expressed as musical intervals, and believed along with the Pythagoreans that these ratios must
therefore produce heavenly music, the musica mundana ‘music of the spheres’. This idea was transmitted
through the Middle Ages, as demonstrated by 'Naturalis Concordia', an anonymous chant from a late 11thcentury manuscript probably used for teaching. This celestial music also resonated in the proportions of the
human body, musica humana, and was the inspiration of our mortal music-making, musica instrumentalis,
which of course was a mere reflection of the magnificence of planetary harmony.
Marsilio Ficino, Franchinus Gaffurius and other humanist philosophers and musicians in the late 15th century
elaborated the correlations of celestial influence and music. The church modes inherited from the Middle Ages
were substituted for the ancient Greek ones, and Gaffurius, following Ramos de Pareja (Musica Practica,
1482), matches each of them with a planet and a muse. This theoretical system was represented as a celestial
lyre by Gaffurius in the frontispiece to his 1496 treatise Practica musicae, projected throughout our program. In
Gaffurius' depiction, Apollo rules the planets at the top. From his feet, a serpent descends to Terra (earth) and
the other three elements: Ignis (fire), Aer (air), and Aqua (water). Pairings of the planets and muses rise up on
either side: Moon/Clio, Mercury/Calliope, Venus/Terpsichore, Sun/Melpomene, Mars/Erato, Jupiter/Euterpe,
and Saturn/Polyhymnia, crowned by the stars/Urania. Musical tones (with their Greek names) and modes cut
sideways between planet and muse as though they were the strings of an instrument, played by the long musical
bow of the serpent. In humanist thought, each mode also has an ethical or psychological effect linked to its
heavenly ruler: the Dorian mode, from D to D, relates to the Sun and has the effect of dispelling sleep; the
Lydian from F to F relates to Jupiter and denotes joy (joviality). Each mode was divided into two forms: the
higher authentic (Dorian, Phrygian, Lydia, Mixolydian) and the lower plagal (Hypodorian, Hypophrygian,
Hypolydian, Hypomixolydian). Plagal forms of the modes were thought to subvert the qualities expressed in
their authentic forms. The starry (eighth) sphere is paired with a higher Mixolydian, the Hypermixolydian, said
to reveal “an innate beauty and loveliness, free from all corruptible qualities.” The earth, stationary in the preCopernican universe, is silent.
Gaffurius, who served Ludovico Sforza as maestro di capella at Milan Cathedral from 1484, was among the
theorists who took up in their writings the humanistic task of restoring to music its antique power. His 1518 De
harmonium musicorum details the ancient authorities for and significances of the modes, and his setting of the
ode 'Musices septemque modos planete', performed one verse at a time throughout our program, describes the
ethos of each mode in its higher and lower expression. The narrations composed by Lawrence Rosenwald offer
a poetic gloss to Gaffurius' writings.
Marsilio Ficino, leading magus of the Medici’s Platonic Academy (from 1462), translated the 88 so-called
Orphic Hymns (now dated to about the 2nd century CE) from Greek to Latin, and was famous for singing them
to his own improvised musical accompaniment on the lira da braccio or lute, the humanist equivalents to
Orpheus' lyre. Neither Ficino’s translations nor his improvised music survive; our texts of the hymns to the
Stars and the Moon are taken from an anonymous late 15th-century Latin translation, sung to melodic formulae
of the time. For Ficino, music, and the Orphic hymns in particular, if performed properly in the correct mode,
with the prescribed incense and with sufficient spiritual focus, allowed the singer to resonate with a specific
heavenly sphere and receive its beneficial powers.
The images projected in this performance combine Renaissance celestial iconography with recent photo-images
of the solar system. Renaissance sources include the so-called ‘Mantegna Tarocchi’: dating from the late 15th
century, they were probably neither engraved by the artist Andrea Mantegna, nor are they actual tarot cards, but
beautifully simple depictions of the Muses, the planets, the seven liberal arts, and other allegorical figures. In
Greek myth the Muses, daughters of Jupiter and Memory, made their home on Mount Helicon, and were each
associated with a particular sphere of music and/or poetry: Thalia, comedy; Clio, history; Calliope, epic poetry;
Melpomene, tragedy; Erato, erotic poetry; Terpsichore, choral song and the dance; Euterpe, lyric poetry;
Polyhymnia, sacred song; Urania, astrology/astronomy. They are often depicted in Renaissance iconography
playing musical instruments.
The music represented in this program is drawn from the courtly, religious, and popular musical spheres, chosen
for the mode in which they are composed, and the aptness of the poetry in terms of planet/god/muse. Gaffurius'
setting of 'Musices septemque' uses long and short notes to express the rhythm of the Sapphic meter, giving it
an unusual asymmetrical quality. Gaffurius' composition is in two voices, one in Dorian and the other in the
Hypodorian mode; we perform subsequent verses adapted to the other modes. A new genre in the early 16th
century, the instrumental ricercar (from the Italian word ‘to seek’) explores the musical dimensions of a
particular mode, whether in the evocative improvisational phrases of Joan Ambrozio Dalza's example, or in the
expressive imitative polyphony of Julio da Modena (also know as Giulio Segni).
The homophonous, declamatory style of the carnival songs contrast with the serious polyphony of madrigals
and motets by Jacquet de Berchem, Andrea Gabrieli, Orlando Lassus and Marc'Antonio Ingegnieri, while the
catchy melodies and energetic counterpoint of the earlier frottole of Bartolomeo Tromboncino strike a middle
ground. In Heinrich Isaac's carnival song 'Canto delle Dèe', one of the goddesses who comes to Florence is
Venus, inspiring entertainments and feasting, as well as more amorous (or venereal) sports. Several of our texts
survive without melodies, and have been set as contrafacta to compositions of the period.
Giulio Caccini's solo songs represent a later style of humanist expression. The florid embellishments in his
setting of Chiabrera's text express an artful desire for the higher love that shines down from above, as the sun
shines its light on the earth and the other planets. And the noble love expressed in 'Odi Euterpe' is addressed to
the Muse about a lady named Lydia!
Renaissance composers mostly avoided the true Phrygian mode in its authentic form, as its dissonant harmonies
upset the rules of 16th-century counterpoint. The plagal form, usually called quarto tono 'fourth tone' (as the
fourth of the church modes) was used extensively for laments. Gaffurius associates this mode with Clio, the
Muse of epic poetry, so Berchem's setting of a lament from Ariosto's epic Orlando Furioso is particularly apt.
The melody of 'L'homme armè' was well-known, featured as a cantus firmus in many Renaissance mass
settings, as well as this short setting by Josquin. The frottola enjoyed great popularity in Italy in the first two
decades of the 16th century, buoyant, dancy settings of light verse, usually with refrains. Tromboncino's 'Alla
guerra', from Ottaviano Petrucci's first book of frottole, combines a martial spirit with lyrics appropriate to
Erato, muse of love poetry.
Lutenist/theorist Vincenzo Galilei (father of the astronomer Galileo Galilei) composed a set of courtly galliards
(triple-time dances involving leaps and fancy footwork), one named for each muse, including Talia (Thalia),
Terpsichore, and Polimnia (Polyhymnia). Composers in the Renaissance usually avoided the true Lydian mode,
finding its raised fourth degree (b natural in a scale from f to f) too prone to producing the devilish tritone, the
'diabolis in musica'. So in pieces composed in the F mode, the b's were almost always tempered with a flat.
Dalza's 'Piva' is a rare exception, exploiting as it does many B naturals over an F drone. The piva was a lively
dance, and also a name for an Italian bagpipe; perhaps Dalza references the bagpipe by setting his lydian
variations over a drone.
The planet/god Saturn was associated in the Renaissance with melancholy, caused by an imbalance in the
humors (too much black bile). Ficino himself, born under the scholarly planet Saturn, suffered from
melancholy. Gaffurius links Saturn to the Mixolydian mode, which lends a tone of nostalgic yearning to
Miseremini and Gabrieli's 'Deus in nomine tuo', fitting for Polyhymnia, Muse of sacred song.
In the final starry sphere the muses are united with Apollo their ruler, and all join in a celestial harmony, each
planet sounding in its profundity a note that our souls long to hear, but which we as mortals can only imagine.
Thus Shakespeare’s Lorenzo muses, gazing up at the stars in The Merchant of Venice:
Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins.
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
Grant Herreid