The video offers the opportunity to listen to the first performance ever of the 36-voice angelic canon of the frontispiece of the Musurgia Universalis (1650) by the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1602 – 1680). Drawing on the Pythagorean correspondence between visible, audible, and intelligible entities, Kircher’s canon is one of the most striking examples of the fruitful dialogue between natural philosophy and music. The harmony of the creation resonates in a musical composition having a circular structure – and eventually performed ad infinitum – and therefore reflecting the main features of planetary motions and angelic songs.
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Links
- Kepler, Mysterium cosmographicum
- Kepler, Harmonices Mundi Libri V
- Kircher, Musurgia Universalis
- Mersenne, Harmonie Universelle