Angel Making Music

In antiquity, the theory of the ‘harmony of the spheres’ or ‘music of the spheres’ was first propagated by the Greek philosopher Pythagoras. He believed that the planets revolving around the earth (as the centre of the universe) were supported by transparent spheres. Pythagoras also thought that the movement of these transparent spheres produced sounds, the pitch of which depended on the distances between the planets and the speed at which the spheres moved. Based on this assumption, a harmonic sound (Greek symphōnía) was produced that the human ear, however, cannot normally hear.

The theory of the music of the spheres was picked up and discussed into the Modern Age. As the aesthetic expression of an ordered cosmos this notion was particularly well received in philosophical and literary circles that considered the universe to be the uniform manifestation of a mathematical order of divine origin. Christians were able to relate to it too, thanks to the passage in the bible according to which God ordered everything “in measure, and number, and weight” (Wisdom 11:20).

William Shakespeare created an enchanting poetic monument to the music of the spheres in his Merchant of Venice (1596–98):

Sit, Jessica. 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.
(Act V, Scene 1)

Melozzo da Forli – origin unknown, public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=408326