Could Music Be a Theory of Everything?
Musica Universalis and the Music of the Spheres... the journey of a philosophical idea through history.
⬆️ Some musical accompaniment for the journey ahead 🎵
How often do you use a calculator when writing a song?
Musica Universalis is a philosophical concept, also referred to as the “music of the spheres” and many other similar names, that proposes that musical tones can be derived from various ratios, calculations, and relationships pertaining to the orbits of the planets and other celestial bodies. Every planet orbits at a certain speed on a certain path, creating a frequency, and the frequencies of various planetary orbits mesh together like notes to create a truly universal symphony as these objects move through space.
At various points in history, various reasons have been given for why we can’t hear these notes, ranging from the idea that they can only be heard by the intellect to the idea that the noise has been present since we were born so we don’t notice it. The theory itself has not been believed to be literally true for many years but the idea persists across many mediums in the modern age. For such an esoteric concept, what is the reason it has remained a topic of intellectual focus for over 2,000 years?
As you might’ve guessed by now, we’ll be exploring another brief and romantic account of history to find some answers.
Pythagoras - Everyone’s Favorite Starting Point
We’ve previously discussed Pythagoras’ eventful day at the Blacksmith and the fixation with ratios this led to, making him an easy starting point for this discussion. Pythagoras established that the pitch or frequency of a musical note has a mathematical relationship with certain other notes, determining whether the notes will sound “good” or “bad” when played together as a “chord.” He identified several specific relationships, or ratios, that sound particularly good and we know these today as the Octave (2:1 ratio), Perfect Fifth (3:2 ratio), and Perfect Fourth (4:3 ratio) among a few others.
Pythagoras then did what he would become most famous for, which was applying these mathematical observations to nature and the greater cosmos to see what further insights could be gained. He imagined that the sun, moon, and planets must each have their own resonant frequency, determined by the length and speed of their orbit in the sky. Pythagoras did not believe these sounds or tones could be heard but he and many other ancient philosophers believed that the quality and harmony of these frequencies could influence the quality of life on Earth.
While this sounds like a fairly simple idea today, an important take away is that this line of reasoning by Pythagoras marks one of the first times we, humans, started to ask if studying something like math, or music, could help one become more attuned to the “divine harmony of the cosmos” and, thus, live a happier life.
Though this “theory” is often attributed to Pythagoras, he was almost certainly building on knowledge he learned from much older Egyptian astronomers, who had always assumed a connection between the stars in the heavens and music existed. In fact, their god, Thoth1 specifically oversees astronomy and music:
The Egyptians knew of 7 celestial bodies (5 planets plus the sun and moon) and this happened to line up nicely with the 7 notes of the diatonic scale (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti) and, if the Roman historian Cassius is to be believed (Book XXXVII, Section 18), this is also where the names for the 7 days of the week come from as well.2 The chart below is actually a fairly straightforward explanation of this.
The ancient Egyptians study into the relationship between math, the cosmos, and music warrants an article all to itself (coming as soon as I understand it better!) but for now, it is suffice to say both the Egyptians and Pythagoreans amassed large amounts of observational data that contained too many coincidental connections between seemingly disparate fields of study to be ignored.
In fact, what may be most significant about Pythagoras’ role here is that he formalized this approach, where observations in fields like math, music, astronomy, and health are combined to form a unified “philosophy” of life, whereby trying to live in “harmony” with nature becomes a central focus and pursuit.
By the way, I know no one loves math but you should definitely check out what ancient math texts looked like.
Plato and Aristotle
Pythagoras’ ideas about universal harmony and music being good for the soul are highly influential in the works of Plato, who would further build out the philosophical scaffolding to support these ideas, most notably in the Timaeus and the later books of The Republic. Plato’s blessing would ensure these ideas of cosmic harmony would remain a central aspect of western philosophy for many years to come.
In book 10 of The Republic, Plato walks us through the famous Myth of Er, which is one of the oldest actual references to the notion of a “music of the spheres” in an ancient text3. This “myth” is Plato’s attempt to explain what happens to the soul when a person dies and, among many other things, describes coming to a great spindle at the center of the universe, around which all things orbit. In each of these orbits there is a Siren who sings out a single note and the notes of these various orbits combine to create a grand harmony. The degree to which each individual soul is in alignment with this harmony determines the quality of that person’s life.
This universal harmony created by celestial bodies is a central tenet of Platonic philosophy and, when Plato argues that teaching music is good for the soul and creates “orderly” minds, it is precisely because those activities mimic and relate to these greater cosmic resonances and frequencies that they have this effect. Plato very much saw music and astronomy as related studies, where astronomy revealed what could be perceived by the eyes and music revealed what could be perceived by the ears and soul, and both were heavily based on a study of math and ratios. Even if Plato never says the term, “music of the spheres” is the encapsulation of this idea.
We should also note that, up to this point, the “music of the spheres” was thought to be a single, beautiful chord that rang out endlessly, without change and in perfect harmony. This is because we still believed the orbit of every planet was perfectly circular and orderly, meaning each orbit created ONE note, and it was the harmony created by each of these notes that came together to create the universal music. This will evolve in due course.
True to form, Aristotle would take the opposite approach to Plato and, for the most part, ignored the idea of a “music of the spheres” altogether. He would famously note that it’s mathematical basis was sound and it thus felt “poetical” but there was little reason, and even less evidence, to suggest the idea of the universe producing music should be taken literally.
Aristotle of course had his own complex understanding of how the celestial realm worked, and his critique of the Pythagoreans is not all that surprising given his steadfast preference for empirical evidence over mystical sciences. This would form the counter-weight to Platonic thought, famously framing the debate in all aspects of western philosophical history through to the modern day.
Further Transmission, Preservation, and Elaboration on the Idea
The ancient world would be too caught up in conquest and turmoil for the next few hundred years to further develop the theory and we’ll pick up the trail again with the Roman historian and senator Boethius4 in the late 5th Century CE. The world owes Boethius an enormous debt as he was a central figure in ensuring the great texts of Classical Greece would get translated into Latin, assuring their relevance and preservation into the modern age. He would also produce many philosophical writings himself and all of this work would go on to form the core of the curriculum that would be taught in educational institutions throughout the Middle Ages.5
Much of Boethius’ own writings attempted to reconcile the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle with the newer teachings of Christianity, ensuring a heavy focus on the metaphysical nature of these philosophies. One of Boethius’ best known works was De Musica, which is where most of our understanding of ancient music theory comes from, and he discusses the concept of musica universalis at length in this work, again helping to preserve its place in intellectual discussions for centuries to come, despite not really being a tangible “thing” with an agreed upon definition. That being said, human curiosity around the idea itself played a huge role here too and should not be overlooked. What about this idea was so intriguing?
For Boethius, music was a critical tool for helping us to understand things we cannot see, and yet music could still be understood and “felt” on a visceral, sensory level, giving it a special place in our toolkit for helping to make sense of the universe. His interest in the idea likely ensured that musica universalis would become part of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy,) the second most important educational curriculum of the Middle Ages, after the Trivium6 (grammar, logic, rhetoric.)
Kepler and Harmonices Mundi
After Pythagoras, Johannes Kepler is the name next most likely to pop up if you google “music of the spheres” and he is a true spiritual successor to many of the ideas of Pythagoras and Plato. His seminal work Harmonices Mundi was an attempt to explain the entire natural world through the interconnected studies of music, astronomy, and geometry. For Kepler, everything in the universe came down to geometric shapes and intervals.
One important scientific development that occurred between Pythagoras and Kepler was the realization that planets don’t actually move in perfectly circular and flat orbits, they often trace irregular paths both on the vertical and horizontal axis. Kepler thus revised the theory to posit that it was the breadth and width of these fluctuations that determined a musical note range that certain planets or orbits could produce.
When all planets moved in perfectly circular paths at a constant speed, it made sense that each planet produced one note. Now, with planets moving in a variety of elliptical orbits and creating a variety of notes, how could they be producing one constant, unchanging chord in perfect harmony?
Through rigorous math, Kepler was able to discern new relationships between these orbital variances and vibrational frequencies, assigning each orbit a range of tones so that now they all came together to form a “continuous and everchanging song.” Kepler did not believe this song was audible but, like Plato, felt that it could be heard by the soul. He called it a “continuous song for several voices, to be perceived by the intellect not the ear.”
In the late 1970s, a group of Ivy League professors were able to do even more math to convert Kepler’s calculations to something that could be reproduced on a newly invented instrument called the synthesizer (with the help of Laurie Spiegel!) and made the supposed “music of the spheres” audible for the first time. Today, you can find many variations of this on youtube.
If mixing phrases like “orbital variances” and “vibrational frequencies” is starting to sound a little far out, it should be noted that Kepler’s Harmonices Mundi is not some obscure book of “mystical” writings but actually the same text that gave us Kepler’s Third Law of Planetary Motion, which presented a mathematical basis to revise our understanding of how planets move and would be highly influential in other significant breakthroughs, like Newton’s Law of Gravity.
There is an obvious religious element to Kepler’s studies7 in these matters as well, with Kepler working to show that a Divine Creator would of course create a universe where perfect harmony is a feature. Tragically and ironically, Kepler’s studies led to him being at eventual odds with the Lutheran church, who would excommunicate him for the most absurd reason and also nearly convict his mother of witchcraft around the same time that Harmoices Mundi was published. Could you imagine being one of your nation’s preeminent scientists for several decades and then having to defend your family against accusations of witchcraft because they were discussing your work?
Kepler’s work is significant for a number of reasons, not least of which was that it synthesized many previous theories around this idea (from Pythagoras, Plato, Copernicus, etc.) and rebuilt it on top of meticulous calculations to give it scientific credibility.
Tracing its path through history, it’s clear musica universalis was an idea people wanted to believe in, because it supported the comforting idea of an orderly universe maybe, but it always required a bit of faith. Now, by taking this “mystical” concept and connecting it to actual physics, Kepler re-inspired the notion that the universe truly was governed by rational principles that could be reasoned out. Though musica universalis perhaps sounds absurd by modern scientific standards today, its basis on mathematical principles can’t be ignored and would seem to imply… something?
Kepler also showed that there was benefit in studying integrated fields of knowledge - like music, philosophy, and geometry - and, this being the dawn of the Enlightenment, the ripple effects of these two things alone in the scientific community cannot be overstated. Though the “music of the spheres” may not have been any specific “lesson” people were taught, it had an aspirational quality that inspired many thinkers to seek similar harmony in their own theories.
Modern Interpretations and Applications
For obvious reasons, this idea of a “music of the spheres” has been a deep source of inspiration for many artists for literally thousands of years. Countless composers, from Handel to Holst to Strauss allude to this concept in a variety of works, and more modern composers like Mike Oldfield and Philip Glass do as well. More recently, the band Coldplay released the album “Music of the Spheres” in 2021, and though the band’s inspiration seems to be more universal (I don’t think they every explicitly mentioned Pythagoras or Kepler on the press tour) the spirit of the effort is clearly aligned.
In researching this article I also discovered the band Thumos, an indie hard rock group that seems to solely write instrumentals based on the works of Plato. They have an album called “Musica Universalis” as well. There are plenty of other bands drawing inspiration from this phrase in some way and there are many artists on youtube who have created mesmerizing videos like this, though calling this “music” may be generous, or perhaps avant garde.
United Visual Artists just closed an installation in which they “found a data set at the very edge of the solar system” and used this to generate harmonic resonances on synthesizers and lights (since light is also a frequency, just like sound.) One could also suggest that Robert Zemeckis’ 1997 film Contact, based loosely on a book by Carl Sagan, was an exploration of a related concept - that math and music are both universal forms of communication. Again, the phrase “music of the spheres” rarely appears in any of these works, but there is a clear bond and inspiration in their themes.
Scientists have remained interested in the idea as well, and though they no longer believe planets or moons emit sounds from their orbits, NASA has done extensive research into the sounds of space as well (I highly recommend you explore their archive here if you’re curious.) On a cosmic level, everything is an electromagnetic wavelength and its the frequency range that will determine whether you can see it, hear it, or feel it. This is a mind blowing concept to consider the next time you’re listening to music.
NASA has also discovered a phenomena known as “orbital resonance” that occurs when the orbits of celestial bodies align in such a way that they exert a pull on each other, different from the trajectory of their normal orbit. Sometimes this helps to stabilize a configuration of objects in a star system, and other times this pulls objects entirely out of their orbit after enough time. Curiously, orbital resonance seems to only occur when two nearby objects have orbital periods that are whole number ratios of each other and thus is extremely rare, though we have found several notable examples of it in the universe.
In our own solar system, orbital resonance has been observed between Pluto and Neptune, due to the 3:2 ratio of their orbits. Back on Earth, other scientists have drawn inspiration from Kepler’s work studying geometric shapes to help them better understand how viruses (like Covid) survive and replicate, since their genetic structure is based on very basic geometry too. Modern quantum mechanics has also drawn a lot of inspiration from music, focusing on the harmonic oscillation of particles at certain frequencies and how they interact with each other. One could explore how the “music of the spheres” is a similar concept playing out on a very macro level. Zooming back in, one can also see the inspiration in string theory, in which all of reality is determined by vibrating strings, much like a musical instrument.8
Conclusion
So as we near the end of this journey, where does this leave us? What can we take away from further contemplation of musica universalis?
Its interesting to note how some ideas have managed to stay relevant for over 2,000 years. What is it that makes them so intriguing?
For anyone contemplating the generalist vs specialist debate, when it comes to education there is immeasurable value in working to see how disparate fields of study might connect
We humans have been fascinated by the mysteries of the universe since the dawn of time and to see how we’ve struggled with these ideas throughout history is both inspiring and humbling.
It makes sense that we would want to understand the world we live in better, especially if this understanding helps us live easier, more harmonious lives, and its also interesting to see how long we've been obsessed with finding THE ONE unifying theory that can explain everything. Musica universalis, being a high minded concept based on math, seems very promising in this regard, and it very much played into the ancient Greek’s love for finding harmony echoed on all levels of an idea.
Perhaps it is this quest to find answers, to search for the greater truth, that is the defining human pursuit? We derive morals and ethics from concepts like this that walk the line between philosophy and scientific exploration. One might even suggest that the reflective quality of this line of thought is valuable in and of itself, and our attempts to understand this cosmic harmony inform our understanding of harmony within society and within ourselves. Sociology might suggest that the persistence of this idea has helped to promote social coherence throughout history too.
Musica universalis is a famous entry in our grand search for meaning and order in the universe. It’s appeal likely comes from our intrinsic desire to believe we live in a universe governed by order, not random accident, and this wrestling with notions of order vs. chaos seems central to the development of the human psyche and also society overall. This is one of the few remaining grey areas where metaphysics and ancient science still hold up under modern scrutiny, though modern science is much more likely to infer these ratios and coincidences are just accidents in an infinite universe.
This is a concept that feels equally at home in esoteric symposiums and also classic rock concerts (Dark Side of the Moon?) which is likely another reason it has maintained such widespread visibility; it appeals to different people for different reasons. Perhaps one of the greatest allegories we can extract from the idea of musica universalis is that all things big and small in this universe interact with each other, and even wildly diverse objects can come together to function in a perfectly harmonious system.
It is great to see the enduring legacy of a profound idea like this, that has made the transmission all the way from the days of Pythagoras to the James Webb Telescope. The human experience has only ever been improved by our desire to look up to the stars and contemplate our place in the vast mechanisms of nature.
The Greeks considered Hermes to be their counterpart to Thoth.
Hilariously, Cassius mentions that the Greeks never really understood this system so it never caught on there but the Romans followed this tradition which is why it has survived through to today. Supposedly, by the time Cassius wrote this in the second century CE it was already an ancestral tradition for the Egyptians.
To be clear, the general idea of there being a connection of some kind between music and astronomy is pretty old, and the actual phrase “music of the spheres” very seldom appears in any ancient text, though usually some combination of these words plus “universe” or “harmony” or “planets” etc. is found. The reference to this idea in the Myth of Er is significant because this takes these loosely connected ideas and formalizes them into a story that would be central to intellectual discussions for the next 1,000+ years.
Not to be confused with Boethus (as I often do) who lived a few hundred years earlier and was also an important contributor to the preservation of ancient Greek writings.
There is an anecdote from historian R.W. Southern in Arthur Herman’s 2013 book, The Cave and the Light, in which he describes Boethius as “the schoolmaster of Medieval Europe.
Not to be confused with the excellent heard rock band, Trivium (because what screams heavy metal more than ancient Medieval education!)
From Wikipedia: “Another important development that allowed Kepler to establish his celestial-harmonic relationships was the abandonment of the Pythagorean tuning as the basis for musical consonance and the adoption of geometrically supported musical ratios; this would eventually be what allowed Kepler to relate musical consonance and the angular velocities of the planets. Thus, Kepler could reason that his relationships gave evidence for God acting as a grand geometer, rather than a Pythagorean numerologist.[3]”
Indeed, Aristotle even said that the Pythagoreans thought of the universe as one big musical instrument or scale. (Metaphysics 1.5, 985b23-986a3)
Also -- looking at the graphic of the ancient Egyptian musical system, I note that Julie Andrews sang it wrong.... It's do re mi fa SOL la SI do! It's sol, not "so" (or "sew") and there's no tea with jam and bread in there.
This is a feast for my curiosity on this topic -- thank you for pulling this together Phillip! I've often wondered why there are 7 notes in the scale. And if we left the Milky Way Galaxy, would we be immersed in a completely different kind of sound? And how does all this relate to cymatics? This demonstration of cymatics blew my mind when I first saw it https://youtu.be/VkmxFBmHLLc