« Un Discours plus plaisant que vraisemblable » : remises en cause de l’harmonie des sphères dans la théorie musicale des XVe et XVIe siècles

Abstract

Although Ancient systems of world harmony are ubiquitous in Medieval and Renaissance musical treatises, they seem to contradict long-established systems of knowledge, such as Ptolemaic astronomy (the system of epicycles and eccentrics, and distances between planets). Moreover, since Antiquity, the order of the sounds produced by the planets, the distribution of musical intervals, the very existence of celestial sounds have given rise to contradictory theories. These doubts and uncertainties lasted throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.Johannes Kepler (Harmonices mundi, 1619) sought to reform this theoretical tradition by founding a new model of musica mundana, not based on the textual traditions inherited from the Ancients, but on the ‟order of the laws of nature”. Although the Keplerian system failed to convey the status of a science to the musical harmony of the world, it will definitively succeed in rejecting the Ancient models, and therefore close a chapter in the history of science.By focusing on Heinrich Glarean’s exposition in the Dodecachordon (1547), we will argue that fifteen and sixteen century musical theory precipitated the demise of the Pythagorean model of the harmony of the spheres. We will also note that this theory reveals a latent mistrust of the Classical model, and heralds the progressive recasting of the categories which founded musical thought, as well as the place of music in relation to the other arts of the quadrivium.

Keywords

• musica mundana
• musical theory
• Renaissance
• Glarean (Heinrich)
• Kepler (Johannes)