Music and the Scientific Revolution

Kepler’s ‘Universal Harmonies’ of the six planets.

Kepler was intrigued by Pythagorean accounts of ‘the harmony of the spheres’. This was the ancient belief that the Sun, Moon and planets all emit their own unique hum in the course of their orbital revolutions. Informed by the new astronomy of Copernicus, Kepler argued that heavenly harmony was indeed to be observed (but not heard) in the elliptical motions of the six planets orbiting the Sun. Kepler identified a different scale for each of the planets by calculating their respective minimal and maximal orbital velocities as seen from the Sun. According to Kepler, had there been air in space, the pitches of the planets would rise and fall smoothly like a siren to form a kind of polyphony.

A recording of the harmony of the spheres can be heard here.

Author: Johannes Kepler
Title: Harmonices mundi [The harmony of the world] (Linz, 1619)
Shelfmark: D.1.35
Provenance: One of a set of Kepler volumes left to Queens’ by John Smith

D.1.35