Sing Aloud Harmonious Spheres: Music, Philosophy and the Order of the Universe in the Renaissance
Sing Aloud Harmonious Spheres: Music, Philosophy and the Order of the Universe in the
Renaissance was a three-day international conference held at the Warwick University
Palazzo in Venice. The conference was organized by Jacomien Prins (University of Oxford) and Maude Vanhaelen (University of Warwick).
Despite a few isolated attempts to foster a dialogue between classics, musicology, and philosophy, the study of Renaissance theories of cosmic harmony remains very much the prerogative of musicologists. Yet during the Renaissance the doctrine of the harmony of the spheres – a Pythagorean doctrine based on the beliefs that the universe was ordered by the same numerical proportions that produce harmonies in earthly music, and that music had the power to affect man's soul – influenced many aspects of culture, be it theology, philosophy, medicine, music, literature, architecture or visual arts. The purpose of the conference was to bring together experts in these disciplines, and encourage the interaction between various fields of research in order to reflect the inherent interdisciplinarity that characterised
Renaissance discussions on world harmony. Two important issues were addressed: firstly, the transmission of the concept of harmony in non-Italian as well as Italian contexts (influence of Jewish and Arabic theories of cosmic harmony; reception of Renaissance ideas about world harmony in England, the Netherlands, France and New Spain). Secondly, the conference successfully explored various ways in which to reassess the pertinence of traditional historiography. Rather than exploring the question whether, and to what extent,
Renaissance ideas on cosmic harmony and music theory prefigured the so-called Copernican revolution or were merely a continuation of traditional modes of thought, we explored the various ways in which Renaissance scholars themselves reconsidered the relationship between cosmos, man and music before and after the 'Copernican revolution'.
Maude Vanhaelen, Department of Italian Studies