Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Music of the Spheres: Music, Science and the Natural Order of the
Universe by Jamie James
Review by: Ivan Hewett
Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 135, No. 1817 (Jul., 1994), pp. 454-455
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1003258
Accessed: 25-06-2017 15:44 UTC

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THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES:

far short of the true realities - the real rel- MUSIC,
minuet by comparing its motions to that
SCIENCE AND THE NATURAL ORDER OF ative velocities, in the world of pure of the heavens. Music theorists now
THE UNIVERSE number and all perfect geometrical have to look elsewhere to explain
Jamie James figures, of the movements which carry music's power to move the soul.
Little, Brown and Company (London,round the bodies involved in them.
1994); For James the Romantic era represents
theby
These, you will agree, are conceived
xv 262pp; ?18.99. ISBN 0 316 90906 8. Fall that follows the Golden Age.
Man now becomes the measure of all
reason and thought, not seen by the eye.'
James describes his book as 'an anecdotal It's a beguiling myth, and from things, and music and science lose tou
Pythagoras onwards the system was
history of the symphony of science and its with the notion of cosmic harmony
counterpart, the wisdom of music'. Itpassed down through Plato, the neo- From now on they pursue different end
Platonics, the Roman rhetoricians and the
sounds modest, but behind the breezy style both equally trivial. It's at this point t
you can hear the deeper undertones of ascholastics - up to the Renaissance and James's argument goes seriously off t
beyond. But it wasn't the same system in rails. He says that 'The history of
familiar myth being retold - that of the
Golden Age followed by the Fall. all respects, despite its appeal to science is the continuing process of the
Although James says in the preface to hisimmutable, timeless mathematical truths. widening gulf between the ideals and the
book that 'I am not a believer in the There were awkward gaps in the system, practice of science.' But surely it would
and
golden age', it soon becomes clear that the maths didn't always quite work. be truer to say exactly the opposite; that
for
As the art of polyphony developed in the only in recent times has science
him the 2000-year period from Pythagoras
to Kepler was indeed a kind of Golden
Christian Church, so the Pythagorean approached its own ideal of being
Age for both music and science. system had to be considerably stretched to testable and therefore corrigible. James
embrace it. James recounts the vicissi-
It's no accident that they flourished is gripped by the Pythagorean myth - and
tudes of the Great Theme with an
together because, according to James, who can blame him? - but myths can't be
they were in essence one and the engagingly
same light touch, and has a gift tested,
for and so have nothing to do with
thing. What united them was their reducing
lofty science. He also makes the mistake of
a tangled theoretical controversy
to its bare, vivid essentials. He takes
purpose, which was to reveal the orderli- care
confounding science with the technolo
ness of God's cosmos to man. Music was to point up the parallel difficulties
gies in
that it has spawned, and then
the deciphering of divine harmony as it berating science for the trivial uses to
astronomy, where from Ptolemy onwards
revealed itself in sound. Science was the
astronomers had to exert a great deal whichofthe technologies are put.
deciphering of the same harmony as ingenuity
it to 'save the appearances', As for music, James takes the gloomy
revealed itself in the heavens. Harmonysquare the observed data with what the view that its history, too, can be described
was the visible or aural expression of theory of 'perfect' circular motion predict- as the divergence - leading to a yawning
number, which, according to Pythagoras,ed. The tradition reaches its baroque gulf - between ideals and practice. The
climax with the astronomer Kepler, who
was at the root of all things. The number bleakness of this view is clearly more than
one expressed unity, persistence in identi-
gets a whole, brilliantly written chapter to he can bear, because he makes strenuous
ty, immutability; two expressed himself. Kepler made efforts to mod- efforts to trace a continuing Pythagorean
dichotomy and mutability; add these ernise the Pyathagoreans, who he said tradition running as it were underground,
together and you get three, which under- 'were so addicted to this kind of philoso- in opposition to the 'official' romantic ide-
lies all things that have beginnings, phizing in numbers... that they failed to ology of self-absorption and
middles and ends; four was the number ofkeep the judgement of their ears.' His self-expression. It's a rather motley cr
points required to describe the simplestingenious solution was say that for every who make up this samizdat Pythagorea
perfect solid. Add four, three, two and consonance there corresponded a perfect tradition of modern times; Newton, th
one and you get ten, the most sacred polygon, one that could be constructed young Mozart of II sogno di Scipio (b
number to Pythagoreans. with a compass and ruler. Those that not the older one of Figaro), Schoenbe
All this of course, had precious little to cannot are 'abominations', and the (for his numerology), Hindemith (for
do with music as it was actually playedmusical intervals that correspond to them moralistic harmonic system), Philip Glas
and sung. That was for mere 'cantores',(the heptagon intervals of 1:7 and 6:7) are
and Stockhausen. (who can be used to
who were judged, by the sages who elabo-likewise abominable and cacophonous. support any dotty cause). As the tradition
rated James's 'Great Theme', to be on a But alas, just as the stubborn facts ofgoes underground it loses its luminous
par with jugglers and acrobats. Music was the heavens caused the downfall of
rigour and slides into mystification, a
to be thought and meditated on, not Pythagorean astronomy, so the Great
change mirrored exactly in James's book.
played. Likewise astronomy had little to Theme in music was driven out by the resist seeing evidence for this
He can't
do with observation, because as Plato reality of music, which by now wasunderground
alto- tradition everywhere; for
said, the heavenly bodies 'are still part of gether worldly in its aims. It's simply
example, the phrase 'alles ist hin' (all is
the visible world, and therefore they fall no good trying to explain a Mozart lost) in Schoenberg's second quartet he

454 The Musical Times July 1994

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takes
takestotorefer
refer
to atokey
a key
stagestage
in thein
alchem- NEW MUSICAL FIGURATIONS:
the alchem- interstices
interstices of
of his
his analysis.
analysis.For
Forexample,
example,he
he
ical
icalprocess.
process.It'sIt's
all deeply
all deeply
unconvincing, ANTHONY BRAXTON'S CULTURAL
unconvincing, shows
shows that
that by
by bringing
bringingtonality
tonality'in
'inand
andout
out
though
thoughhighly
highlyentertaining.
entertaining. CRITIQUE of focus' in his bebop-derived
The
Theirony,
irony,though, is that
though, there's
is that no Ronald
there's no M. Radano Composition 6, Braxton is deliberately
need for James to make dubious claims Chicago UP (Chicago & London, 1993); mediating between traditions previously
315pp; ? . ISBN 0 22670 196 4.
about an underground continuation of the thought of as racially distinct. This ability
Great Theme, because the tradition actu- to relate social concepts to the notes them-
ally continues above ground in full view. selves recalls the verve of Theodor
Anthony Braxton has a formidable repu-
tation among new music listeners. His
The Romantics weren't just interested in Adorno discussing Schoenberg or Mahler.
self-expression for its own sake; they recorded work - vast in ambition and Cultural studies gurus like Simon Frith
were interested in it because they scope, scarcely a redundant piece of and Dick Hebdige make non-classical
believed the self and nature to be myste- music in a discography of over sixty music worthy of academic study by sub-
riously intertwined. Exploring self and albums - looms as one of the few gen- jecting it to sociology. Pop music becomes
exploring nature were, according to the uine encounters between classical music an aspect of youth or minority 'resistance'.
romantic philosopher CG Carus, one and If music fails to reach the mass market it is
and jazz. Initially inspired by what any
the same thing. The key to their view of black youngster could hear in the judged irrelevant: the avantgarde drops
the universe was the idea of plenitude, Chicago of the 50s, Braxton was radi- from view. As Gillian Rose pointed out in
which holds that the world is an expres- calised by the events of the next decade. Hegel contra sociology, such an approach
sion of God's exuberant creative In 1969 he created a stir in Paris as an is flawed by its repression of the writing
generosity. Everything that can existof the 'New Thing': free jazz
exponent subject. Radano, in contrast, uses sociolo-
must exist - there are no gaps interpreted
or omis- as the musical wing of Black
gy to articulate his own aesthetic respons-
sions in creation, otherwise the Great Power. In the mid-70s, Arista Records, es. Thus Braxton is valuable because he

Chain of Being would no longer be a
chain. As Schiller put it, 'Every kind of
perfection must attain existence in the
fullness of the world... every offspring of
the brain, everything that wit can fashion,
then a major label, promoted him as 'the refuses to be locked into binary opposi-
new Charlie Parker' - a saxophonist tions (black/white, improvisation/compo-
whose innovations could unify an sition, academic/homegrown), refusals
increasingly fractured jazz scene and pro- that can be pointed to at specific junctures
vide the next step in its evolution. in his music.

has an unchallengeable right of citizen- Perversely, Braxton took the opportuni- Radano has a knack for the vivid

ship in this largr understanding of ty to further his interest in composition. phrase: 'brief stabs of buzz-lipped, har-
creation. In the infinite chasm of nature He produced complex orchestrations that mon-muted colour engage an eerie flutter
no activity could be omitted, no grade of sounded more like something written at of abrupt violin attacks'; 'the stiff, amus-
enjoyment be wanting in the universal Darmstadt than improvised in a night ingly awkward arco bass accompaniment
happiness.' (Schiller, Philosophical club. By the 80s, an increasingly conserv- parodies both 'serious' composition and
letters, Cotta ed., XII, 189,188) In this ative jazz scene viewed him as an eccen- Braxton's own 'intellectual' persona.'
novel twist to the ancient idea of the tric, and Arista cancelled his contract. Unlike the somewhat grim resistance
Great Chain of Being lay the perfect jus- Today, Braxton's releases are restricted to Adorno discerned in Schoenberg and
tification for romantic self-expression. tiny European labels like Leo and Black Beckett, Radano's oppositional muse is
God's creative generosity had to be Saint. This commercial eclipse has only colourful: perverse and satirical,
matched by the artist's, so the pursuit of served to harden the resolve of his sup- humourous and angry all at once.
wilful individuality became a kind of porters: Richard Barrett, has called him Radano has made an important contri-
duty. James mentions this ancient idea as 'more important than Schoenberg'. In a bution to the existing literature. Graham
being an essential component of the music world increasingly understood via Lock's account of Braxton's 1986
Great Theme, but he never refers to it the logic of the market, such claims are Contemporary Music Network tour,
again. This is hardly surprising, given ripe for explanation. Forces in motion, is the only previou
that the idea of plenitude raises a vision Author Ronald Radano is assistant pro- book-length study. Braxton's research
of teeming, chaotic diversity which is fessor of Afro-American studies at into Egyptian mysticism, colour theor
hard to square with the radiant, still per- Wisconsin University. When dealing and astrology were aired with a reveren
fection of the Music of the Spheres. with something as mercurial as jazz, aca- that bordered on new age idealism..
Perhaps one day James will write a book demic discourse can easily sound Though Radano carefully avoids any slurs
that tells the other. story, the story of laboured. Radano has come up with a on private schematics that might stimulate
music as a reflection of living nature, Braxton's creativity, his approach is
virtuosic style, simultaneously authorita-
rather than of an inert but perfect cosmos. refreshingly down-to-earth. Unlike Lock
tive and witty: deft and descriptive where
IVAN HEWETT necessary, he also recognises larger (and his mentor Val Wilmer), Radano
issues. He takes social facts into the very avoids hagiography. The Association for

July 1994 The Musical Times 455

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