The Music of the Spheres by Jamie James

The Music of the Spheres by Jamie James

The Music of the Spheres by Jamie James

‘In the modern age it is a basic assumption that music appeals directly to the soul (which has been called by many names – sensibility, temperament, the emotions, among others) and bypasses the brain altogether, while science operates in just the reverse fashion, confining itself to the realm of pure ratiocination and having no contact at all with the soul. …. These suppositions would have seemed very strange to an Athenian of Plato’s day, to a medieval scholar, t an educated person of the Renaissance, even to a habitué of London’s coffeehouses in the eighteenth century.’ – quote from The Music of the Spheres

This quote is a great place to start to understand what this book is really about and why I enjoyed it so much. I have not read nor understood this side of the history of music, as it is so well laid out in this book. It’s like the history of science and music meets Angels and Demons. It is just a wonderful study of how the understanding and acceptance of music has changed so much, especially in the last 200 years, which isn’t that long ago, when you think that he starts from the Greek era in some of his descriptions of music and its historical understanding.

‘Somehow, Mozart’s symphony, rather than telling us about joy, creates joy. The music is a zone of joy. How is that possible? The Greeks knew the answer: music and the human soul are both aspects of the eternal.’

Its statements like these that make me wonder, why did we stray so far away from these understandings of music and science? For such a long time they were all considered the same thing and carried an equal weight of appreciation and understanding. In this book Jamie James explains how we lost touch with this understanding and why, a brilliant journey through our past history to the turn of this last century.

A beautiful argument against science of today:

‘In this century the classics have slipped to the periphery of the curriculum, and in the place of enquiring humanism we now have condescending nihilism: the modern intelligentsia smiles at Christian fundamentalists, at credulous followers of absurd schools of psychotherapy, at adherents of what is call the New Age. Yet if people are driven to feel a connection with the Absolute by wearing crystal jewellery and listening to voices from beyond the grave, as naïve as those beliefs may be perhaps we ought not castigate them for abandoning science – for has not science abandoned them? Is it reasonable to expect that the man in the street will be content with being told, “Your life is pointless, and you are destined to be a sterile, meaningless speck of stardust, but be of good cheer: science will tell you how to power your automobile with pig droppings?”’

I think there is much to learn that this book highlights and I wish it was part of today’s curriculum, as it shows quite clearly why the arts are so important and needs to continue to be on equal footing with all other sciences and studies.