Planets makes music!
Hello friends of Hive.blog. I wish you an excellent new year.
In this opportunity I bring a very curious investigative note. Someone asked me: if everything on earth produces a sound, then the planets also produce sounds? What sounds are they? This question awakened my curiosity and led me to investigate to see what the fathers of music theory throughout history had to say. And I came across the following. Read on.
It turns out that the Pythagorean school, active since the 6th century BC, sought to understand the harmony between the universe, and numbers. For which they developed astronomical, acoustic and musical archetypes, to the point that music and arithmetic were studied together. Yes, music and mathematics ! The Pythagoreans believed that the movements through space of the planets generated harmonic sounds, imperceptible to humans: they called it the "music of the spheres".
The idea of a cosmos in equilibrium, defended by the Pythagoreans and also explored by Plato and Aristotle, was known as the "harmony of the spheres", and consisted, in very basic terms, in the idea that the planets generated sounds depending on their position and movement, and that these sounds were consonant, i.e. harmonic, like the notes of a chord! The German Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), a faithful student of Pythagoras and Plato, had also studied religion, ethics, dialectics, rhetoric, as well as physics and astronomy. At the beginning of the 17th century, the motion of the planets was a mystery that could only be answered in God's providence. Kepler shed light on this mystery and established the laws of planetary motions, one of the greatest scientific discoveries in history. But his theories did not end there. Kepler upheld the vision of the harmony of the spheres postulated by the Greeks. Thus, in his work Harmonices Mundi (The Harmony of the Worlds), of 1619, Kepier exposed, hand in hand with his astronomical studies, the thesis that each planet emits a sound in its circulation around the Sun, determined by its angular velocity. This angular velocity has its extremes at the perihelion (closest point to the Sun) and at the aphelion (farthest point from the Sun) of its elliptical trajectory. Kepier compared the sounds at either end. He came up with scales and chords associated with each of them. According to his calculations, the melodies of Venus and the Earth varied in an interval of a semitone or less; at the other extreme, Mercury extended its maximum interval beyond an octave. Kepier's religiosity and faith led him to maintain that very rarely had the planets sounded in harmony; perhaps, he thought, only at the time of Creation. This brings us to the next part.
God's nature is musical
Dr. Frank Garlock, professor of music theory, who has taught at Bob Jones University and is a professor at Pensacola Christian College, in his Seminar "The Language of Music" mentions that the nature of God is musical. If God's nature is musical and in his creation is imbued that very essence, then the classical thinkers were right. The book of Job says it in other words: Job 38:4,7 RV60
[4]Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? let me know, if you have understanding.
[7]When all the stars of the morning were praising, And all the sons of God were rejoicing? Maybe this last quote doesn't resonate for you but it is the most important for me. And if I am going to be complete in my writing, it is necessary for me to include it. When God made the universe, the planets and stars raised their voices to such a sublime harmonic frequency with each other that they generated the most beautiful astral symphony ever heard. If there is a harmonic sound in the stars, then they must be orchestrated by someone with sufficient understanding to make them flow in harmony.
Conclusion.
As I mentioned before, from Pythagorean thought in the classical world, through Plato, Aristotle, contemporary astronomy and Dr. Garlock, the firm conviction has been held that there is a whole perennial work of musical art in the cosmos that although imperceptible or perhaps mellifluous to our ears, is closely linked to the nature of its composer; and like all music, it must have a message.
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