The Temple of Music of Robert Fludd

The Temple of Music of Robert Fludd

The Temple of Music of Robert Fludd

OBERT FLUDD (1574-1637) IS WELL KNOWN among historians of science and philosophy for his intriguing work, Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atque technica historia (The Metaphysical, Physical and Technical History of both Major and Minor Worlds), in which music plays an important role in his system of neoplatonic correspondences: the harmony of the universe (macrocosm) as well as the harmony of man (microcosm). The Temple of Music (1617-18) is one section of this treatise, and deals with music theory, practice and organology. Many musicologists today have dismissed Fludds musical ideas as conservative and outmoded or mainly based on fantasy; only the chapters on instruments have received some attention. However, reading Fludds work on music theory and practice in the context of his own time and comparing it with other contemporary treatises, it is apparent that much of it contains highly original ideas and cannot be considered old fashioned or conservative. It is evident that Fludds music philosophy influenced and provoked contemporary natural philosophers such as Marin Mersenne and Johannes Kepler. Less well known is the fact that Fludds music theory reveals aspects of the development of new concepts that may have inspired contemporary writers on music such as John Coprario and Thomas Campion...
Extract from Peter Hauge, The Temple of Music by Robert Fludd in Music Theory in Britain, 15001700: Critical Editions (2011)

HE TEMPLE, PRESIDED OVER by Apollo (the god of rational music) and Thalia (the joyous muse), contains within its structure representations of the various aspects of musical knowledge--a clock representing the durations of musical time, a monochord tower signifying the proper divisions, a lower vestibule showing Pythagoras and the smithy, graffiti on the walls presenting musical notation, two entryways representing the portals of the ears, and a spiral near the top signifying air set in motion by sound. The temple serves as a mnemonic device to structure both the treatise and ones comprehension of music. As the treatise proceeds, Fludd examines the temple in detail with illustrations of enlarged portions of the structure serving to guide his discussion. Fludd divides his treatise into an introduction and seven books. The introduction describes the temple briefly. The first book introduces the subject of music with definitions and etymologies. This book introduces the quasi Porphyrian trees that serve to structure much of the information Fludd presents (this compendious method of presentation was employed earlier by Artusi in his summary of Zarlinos work). The second book briefly discusses the hexachords arid the third addresses the ratios of the intervals via the monochord. The fourth book deals with rhythmic concerns; the fifth provides an introduction to composition; the sixth addresses organology; and the seventh presents an automaton for music making of the authors invention (thus tying this book into the seventeenth century craze for automata).
Extract of a review by Chadwick Jenkins, City University of Arno York of Peter Hauges The Temple of Music by Robert Fludd in Music Theory in Britain, 15001700: Critical Editions (2011) from Notes, June, 2012, the quarterly journal of the Music Library Association.

The Temple of Music of Robert Fludd

HILE FLUDD CERTAINLY BELIEVED that the whole cosmos was generated through numbers and proportions (and was therefore inherently musical), this should not lead us to discount his treatment of real music.

Fludds Temple has been overlooked by musicologists mainly because (a) it is in Latin, unlike most other seventeenth-century English music theory, and (b) it is embedded within his monumental history of the macrocosm and microcosm, a publication that led him into vituperative controversy with two prominent Continental natural philosophers, Johannes Kepler (15711630) and Marin Mersenne (15881648). As the authors respectively of Harmonices mundi libri V (Linz, 1619) and Harmonie universelle (Paris, 1636), Kepler and Mersenne, no less than Fludd, understood the universe to be harmonically constructed. But for reasons that lie beyond the scope of this review, these critics judged his entire philosophical method as false and his adherence to the Pythagorean division of the monochord as essentially outmoded. This opinion soon became orthodoxy, and while they have become icons of the Scientific Revolution, Fludd has been typecast as a misguided supporter of magical and mystical thinking that was swept away by the Enlightenment. This appraisal was further reinforced by the eighteenth-century music historian John Hawkinss discovery that much of the Temple was copied verbatim from the fourteenth-century English Quatuor principalia musicae rather than being original to Fludd, and therefore deserved no interest (p. 7). However, Fludds tendency to cut and paste material without attribution was absolutely normal for his time... [He] also applied the same bricolage techniques to visual information, copying earlier images or adapting them for his own use... it is revealing to learn that the mnemonic image of the Temple was derived from a variety of sources and built around a common framework, and is therefore not quite as original as has previously been thought. The composition of the Temple as a whole, however, was something new, and shows Fludds skill in using graphic images as a tool for communicating and memorising complex information. This was a pedagogical method that was becoming more widespread thanks to print technology, the disadvantage being (as the Temple shows) that errors could be made in production that rendered such images distinctly problematic. Despite its flaws, the Temple adds up to something more than the sum of its various parts, and throws light on an aspect of early modern European musical culture, including what was classified as speculative music or harmonics, that thanks to our focus on practice has effectively been lost from view by music historians.
Extract of a review by Penelope Gouk (University of Manchester) of Peter Hauges The Temple of Music by Robert Fludd in Music Theory in Britain, 15001700: Critical Editions (2011) from Music and Letters, Volume 93, Issue 3, pp. 401-404.

The Temple of Music of Robert Fludd

ROBERT FLUDDS TEMPLE OF MUSIC

Translated by Todd Barton, M.A. This description which accompanies the frontispiece of Fludds Temple of Music is taken from the Utriusque Cosmi Historia, Tractate II, Part 2, p 161-162. HE POETS, WHOSE EFFORTS ARE ACCUSTOMED to be assiduously engaged with fables and images, would be singing about the buildings and wonderful sight of this temple. Indeed, they may have pursued this subject with even greater acumen since, after all, music derived its name from their goddesses, the Muses, just as is evident from its etymology. I beseech, therefore, that I may ask pardon from them if I permit myself to be led very much without measure by the invention and stimulus of poetical madness in the description of this temple. Thus let us imagine this Temple of Music to be built on the top of Mt. Parnassus, the abode of the Muses, adorned in every part with eternally green and flowering woods and fields, and pleasantly surrounded by crystal fountains flowing here and there in different directions whose murmur often brings a peaceful sleep to passers-by. Birds frequent these parts and inhabit the woods pouring forth diverse consonances of sound in greater symphony. They seem diligently to lay the basis or foundation by means of their higher, more piercing song ; through their melody the Nymphs themselves around the temple, the Satyrs led through the woods by Sylvanus and the shepherds led through the fields by Pan, are all moved to engage in choral dances. Among these delights, therefore, that divine gift of Apollo is established, preserved and indeed worshipped by the adoration of all souls. All of its constituent parts are given up to peace and concord, in the mysteries of harmony and symphony, including the concords of heaven and the elements, so mutually bound to each other that it would be necessary for the whole world to perish and be reduced to nothing by the strifes of discord before these consonances would either disappear or be destroyed. Therefore, the protectress or goddess of this temple is Concordia, Ineffable Concord, great offspring of the Being of Beings, by whose adoration little things grow, and by whose contempt great things fall to pieces. Its guardian or priestess is Thalia, most delightful of the nine Muses, by the example of whose harmony the occult mysteries are explained to pilgrims who suppliantly seek her oracles. Therefore a man with a keen eye for knowledge will pay attention to any part of this structure and not disdain the smallest portion, because it is moved by that harmonic soul of Apollo in each part as in its whole. That spirit of music, after the manner of a zephyr, is accustomed to blow through all the sinews of this building, soothing and gladdening the souls of living beings, carrying away with itself the lusts of man, and restraining the madness of evil demons as if imbuing them with a certain humanity. 5

The Temple of Music of Robert Fludd

You should eagerly contemplate the spiral revolution of the larger tower of the temple, which denotes the motion of air, after it is caused to resound by sound or voice. The two doors represent the ears, the organs of hearing, without which the emitted sound cannot be perceived, nor may one enter this temple except by them. In the following place you will see its three smaller towers representing the arrangements of notes, rotundum, quadrature and naturalis. And with the observation of these, three rectangles must be carefully examined in order to determine the diverse natures, names and places of the aforementioned notes in the demonstrated system (anything placed under any tower is naturally related to that tower). The pipes or organs of these rectangles, distinct in their height, denote the difference of voices and sounds of any rectangle. Indeed, the division of the column of this temple must not be disdained, since it will delineate the true proportions and diverse species of consonances. The clock must also be zealously pondered lest time waver unexpectedly or advance with too slow a pace, that is, one which does not observe proportion or measure. And so, this clock is a sort of guardian of the regular times of notes and a most ample mirror of their simple value. Why then will not the triangle of proportionate quantity have to be inspected, which probes into the diversity of the proportion of tines in diminution as well as in augmentation and clearly shows the perfection and imperfection of notes ? Also the triangle of the system of harmonious intervals, as it were the end of all the remaining mysteries, ought to be looked into with no little care, since through it and from it all the concord of music are produced, without which no harmony is made. Beyond this triangle is depicted the story in which the discovery of its consonances is told, namely the observations of Pythagoras, who passing by a certain blacksmiths shop by chance hearing an agreement from the striking of four hammers, ordered the hammers to be weighed, and from the difference of their weights he discovered the three musical proportions of consonances ; diatessaron, diapente, and diapason which we have very plainly explained by the letters and connection of letters in the three windows of the temple which are equally of use in the composition of musical harmony and the harmonical triangle. Therefore, eager reader, if you keenly examined these parts of the temple, you will be a partaker of all of its mysteries and a great master of this excellent science.