The Harmony of the World - a realization for the Ear of Johannes Kepler's Astronomical Data from Harmonices Mundi 1619
The Harmony of the World - a realization for the Ear of Johannes Kepler's Astronomical Data from Harmonices Mundi 1619
介质: Audio CD
发行时间: 2003-11-22
唱片数: 1
出版者: The Kepler Label
条形码: 0827912001785
专辑简介
The Harmony of the World
A Realization for the Ear of Johannes Kepler's Data from Harmonices Mundi 1619
The main purpose of this record is to present Kepler's Harmony of the World for a period of several centuries. We decided that the length of time represented would have to be at least as long as the period of revolution of the slowest planet, Pluto. Pluto's period is approximately 248 years or, in our terms, 20 minutes and 42 seconds, and we chose a total length of 22 minutes, representing 264 years.
When one listens to the full nine-part Harmony - six tonal and three rhythmic "voices" - one may find it difficult to sort out the individual voices and assign them to the planets they represent. Therefore we begin by introducing the planets one by one, from the innermost to the outermost. The first you hear is Mercury, which as the innermost is the fastest and the highest pitched. It has a very eccentric orbit (as planets go), which it traverses in 88 days; its song is therefore a fast whistle, going from the E above the piano (e""') down more than an octave to about C# (c#"") and back in a little over a second.
Venus and the Earth in contrast have nearly circular orbits. Venus' range is only about a quarter tone, near the E next above the treble staff (e"'); Earth's is about a half tone, from G (g") to G4# at the top of that staff. Together they drone a sixth, but the sixth is continuously changing from major to minor, or even down partway to a fifth, as the two planets go through their cycles - about 3 seconds for Venus, exactly 5 for Earth. Kepler compared Earth's sad minor second to the first minor second in the standard Do-Re-Mi scale - mi-fa-mi - and for him it sang of Earth's unending misery-famine-misery. Living into the period of the Thirty Years War, and indeed dying then, he knew what he was talking about, and for many millions in our own century, the song has not changed.
Next out from the Earth is Mars, again with an eccentric orbit. Its song is distinctive, one of the easiest to pick out in the full Harmony. Alone in the alto, it ranges from the C (c") above middle C down to about F*~ (f4t') and back, in nearly 10 seconds.
The distance from Mars to Jupiter is much greater than that between the inner planets (as mentioned above, the asteroids in this gap may represent a missing planet), and Jupiter's song is much deeper, in the baritone or bass, and much slower. It covers a minor third, from D to B (D to B) just below the bass staff. Still farther out and still lower is Saturn, only a little more than a deep growl, in which a good ear can sometimes hear the individual vibrations. Its range is a major third, from B to G (B2 to G2),the B at the top being just an octave below the B at the bottom of Jupiter's range. Thus the two planets together define a major triad, and it may well have been this concord - in the ratio 4:5:6, inevitable when angular velocities are equated with pitches - that made Kepler sure he had cracked the code and discovered the secret of the celestial harmony. Saturn's cycle is about 2 1/2 times that of Jupiter (almost 2 1/2 minutes vs. almost 1 minute), and their songs commonly strike the concordant ratios. This would be even more evident if the speed of the music were doubled, so that the cycles were half as long and the pitches were all raised an octave; together they then sing a majestic counterpoint in the key of G Major.
The outer, post-Kepler planets we have simulated not by musical tones at the given vibration frequency but by sharp rhythmic beats. Uranus is a rapid ticky-ticky-ticky changing gradually from less than 9 to more than 10 per second and back but over a period of 7 minutes, so that the change is not easy to detect. When the much steadier (because much less eccentric) Neptune is added, however, at nearly 5 per second, the changes in Uranus' rhythm become more obvious, because the ratio between the two shifts continually back and forth from less than to
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