The Music of the Spheres: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance harmonia

Abstract

Most people are familiar with the exquisite painting by Botticelli known as the Primavera.But perhaps it is not so widely known that the programme of its enigmatic symbolism was inspired by the Neoplatonic notion of the harmony of creation, reflected in the correspondences of the mythological characters to both the eight planetary spheres and the eight tones of the musical octave. 1 It is probably even less appreciated that Botticelli's visual metaphor for the harmony of the spheres was inspired by the work of one man, Marsilio Ficino of Florence (1433-99), whose desire to unite heaven and earth in the soul of the human being found its precedent in the writings of the Platonic tradition.In restoring 'the divine Plato' to Renaissance Florence Ficino set out to 'redeem holy religion' from the 'abominable ignorance' of secular philosophy. 2 My intention in this paper is to illustrate how music theory and performance became part of a programme of spiritual development stemming directly from a symbolic understanding of the cosmos which transcended, and yet embraced, all quantitative modes of thinking.Such a mode of 'knowing' was conveyed by Ficino in the Latin word notio (from which our word 'notion' is derived) in the course of his translation of the Neoplatonist Iamblichus' treatise on divination, De mysteriis. Iamblichus asserts:'Contact with divinity is not knowledge.For knowledge is in a certain respect separated from its object by otherness.But prior to knowledge -as one things knows another -is the uniform connection with divinity, which is suspended from the gods, and is spontaneous and inseparable from them.' 3 In Iamblichus' explanation of unitive thought Ficino recognised the ground of both philosophical speculation and religious piety, without which 'knowledge' becomes dissociated from the primary reality of the world and thus can be of little meaning.I believe Ficino's articulation of this insight to be the creative impulse behind the immense flowering of

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