The Starry Messenger
appeared in 1610, a demonstration of convergence of two worlds, the
material, changeable world within the orbit of the changeable moon, and
the celestial world above. Looking through Galileo’s
eyes, enhanced with telescopic vision, observers now compare the play of
light on Tuscan peaks at dawn and the enlargement of spots of light on the
face of the moon. Galileo’s
Starry Messenger, no longer the angel of annunciation, takes shape as a
physical body, with features visible and measurable by just the means
developed for encompassing the earth. In 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus had
published a theory of revolution with the sun, not the earth, at the
center of planetary motion. Copernicus, however assumed circular orbits,
and his theory given that assumption was less accurate then traditional
views. Galileo also held to circular motion as self-evident,
Not until 1618 would Johannes Kepler publish his discovery that orbits are
ellipses. But Galileo did demonstrate that terrestrial and celestial
measurements followed the same law. His demonstration appealed to educated
ecclesiastics, but imagined effect on general audiences led to his forced
recantation, his forced confession that his view was no more than a
theory.
In his personal notebook, during a bleak time
in Spanish history,
Goya calls upon the spirit
of Galileo (tied down by inquisitors, but inwardly inquisitive still, to revive his faith in reason.
The Indigo Girls two centuries
later seek similar solace and energy.
Galileo’s
Starry Messenger
Indigo Girl’s
Galileo
Eratosthenes and others provided Galileo with
insights crucial to his developing insight.
Eratosthens’ vision
Measuring the moon
Andreus Vesalius in 1542,
a year before Copernicus published his account of revolution, published
his account of the inner world, De fabrica corporis humani (the
structure of the human body), While Galileo invited consideration of
moonlight through geometry, Vesalius considered how to get moonlight into
a chamber, how the fabric of the human body develops insight.
Vesalius, from his
1542 publication, De fabrica corporis humani (the structure
of the human body), still invites viewers to unravel the mystery of flesh
and spirit. The anatomist will perish, but the vision he shaped in life
lives on in inherited memory. Vesalius as a Christian, shares horror and
empathy confronting the end of sin: the cadaver revealing the mysteries of
anatomy was hanged, perhaps for murder. Vesalius, himself himself a sinner,
works to reveal the workings of mankind.
Vesalius, De fabrica corporis humani
At seventeen, twenty three
years early, Vesalius would have studied the famous engravings by
Albrecht Dürer,
Knight, Time and Death, and Melancholy.
Harvey, De motu cordis
A century later, in 1632, a dozen years after
William Harvey published De Motu Cordis, demonstrating the
circulation of blood through the heart, Rembrandt would commemorate
Vesalius’
exploration of bodily fabric and psychic consequence. The Anatomy lesson
of Dr. Tulp engages his seven disciples, sufficiently prominent to
identify themselves on the notes held by one viewer. Dr. Tulp and
Rembrandt, like Vesalius, relied on a hanged man, in this case a known
murderer. To murder or to create: both possibilities inhere in free will,
in every Dutch burgher as much as in every Dutch criminal. Open to our
inspection, a sinister (left) hand draws memories. But this hand has the
configuration of the opposing hand, its dexterity (right) calls for
attention. Is the good physician displaying for us the sinful nature of
the convict, with the possibility of using anatomical and civic
understanding to improve Dutch society? Or is the good physician
displaying the vanity of just such attempts? Traditional assumptions about
human limitations vie with current hopes for progress through rational
analysis.
Players and Musicians
A generation later in England, the hanging of
criminals provided entertainment, with the acting out of the wages of sin.
On the one hand, the removal of a criminal reduced crime, and the
spectacle of retribution was designed to discourage further predations.
But such a sinner also was one among us all, and the popular song Fortune
my Foe became the accompaniment to hanging. Not just for the criminal is
fortune the foe.
Born in the year
Vesalius published De fabrica caporis, the English composer William
Byrd composed his own variation on the hanging song, Fortune my foe.
Among the few Catholic composers of his day,
he continued to compose and perform in Protestant England. In 1605 the
discovery of of tunnels and gunpowder under the Houses of Parliament
brought Guy Fawkes to the gallows. Catholics, assumed subversives, were
hanged, and others fled to the relative tolerance of Holland. English
Catholic composers, viewed as practitioners of Popish aggrandizement in
England, also fled England, often to Holland.
Byrd’s Fortune my
Foe
In London theatres clowns would play upon
pretensions to power and prosperity, and in Queen Elizabeth’s
day Richard Tarleton served as her cherished jester. Tarleton died in 1588, but among
his memorable performances is his posthumous engagement with Hamlet, as
vivid in Hamlet’s memory as Alexander or Caesar:
Horatio
This same skull,
sir, was Yorick's skull,
the king's jester.
Hamlet
This?
First Clown
E'en that.
Hamlet
Let me see.
Takes the skull
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew
him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a
thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination
it is! my gorge rims at
it. Here hung those lips
that I have kissed I know
not how oft. Where be your
gibes now? your
gambols? your songs? your
flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the
table on a roar? Not one
now, to mock your own
grinning? quite chap-fallen?
Now get you to my lady's
chamber, and tell her, let
her paint an inch thick,
to this favour she must
come; make her laugh at
that. Prithee, Horatio, tell
me one thing.
Horatio
What's that, my lord?
Hamlet
Dost thou think Alexander
looked o' this fashion i'
the earth?
Horatio
E'en so.
Hamlet
And smelt so? pah!
Puts down the skull
Horatio
E'en so, my lord.
Hamlet
To what base uses we may
return, Horatio! Why may
not imagination trace the
noble dust of Alexander,
till he find it stopping a
bung-hole?
Horatio
'Twere to consider too
curiously, to consider so.
Hamlet
No, faith, not a jot; but
to follow him thither with
modesty enough, and
likelihood to lead it: as
thus: Alexander died,
Alexander was buried,
Alexander returneth into
dust; the dust is earth; of
earth we make loam; and
why of that loam, whereto he
was converted, might they
not stop a beer-barrel?
Imperious Caesar, dead and
turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep
the wind away:
O, that that earth, which
kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to
expel the winter flaw!
John Dowland, a composer and lutenist as
appreciated for music as Shakespeare was for drama, and much more highly
paid, shared his experiences of melancholy. Semper Dowland, semper
dolan (Always Dowland, always dour) and Lachrymae variations ( Seven
Tears) found favor eventually leading Dowland from London to Denmark to
serve the Danish Court. Dowland no doubt appreciatied his predecessor
Richard Byrd, and Byrd.
Tarleton’s
Risurection recalls the clown, not to rise above worldy cares, but to
appreciate our fragile anatomy.
Tarleton’s Resurrection
Music as Art and Science
Music’s
power to move listeners, to dance, to emotive states, to the recollection
of events, coexists with underlying structure. Galileo calls attention to
the book of nature, most clearly evident in astronomy, by identifying the
language in which it is written: the language of numbers. Galileo grew up
with music. His father Vicenzo, a lutenist and composer, was among the
foremost musical theorists of his time. The Galileo who observed during a
service in Florence Cathedral the swinging of a chandelier, swaying more
or less swiftly as breezes swirled, used his pulse, that standard of fast
and slow, to recognize that the time for swinging back and forth did not
vary, however little or great the distance traveled. Galileo’s eye, ear
and intellect were refined and integrated, an integration essential for
the scientist as well as the musician.
Guillaume Machaut, the first composer to leave
a full musical setting of the mass, linked immediacy of impression with
sophisticated structure. In the mid 1300s, he creates the experience
of divine order combined with human frailty in his canon Ma fin est mon
commencement (My end is my beginning).
The soprano voice
sings from beginning to end. The tenor accompanies, singing from end to
beginning. The independent alto voice part proceeds halfway, then proceeds
backwards to end on its own beginning.
Ma fin est mon commencement
Bruneleschi’s great
dome, a marvel equally to sight and to intellect, completed the Cathedral
of Maria del Fiore in Florence. Celebrating the dedication of the
cathedral on March 25, 1436, Guillaume Dufay’s Nuper rosarum flores offers
an auditory accompaniment to the visual graces of Mary’s dwelling. His
variation on sound and sense suits the occasion. His Virgine Bella, also
in praise of the Virgin, offers a more intimate variation on sound and
sense.
Nuper rosarum flores
Virgine Bella
But the evidence of harmony between earthly
music and the music of the spheres came under the same scrutiny that
Galileo applied to temporal and celestial assumptions. Like The Starry
Messenger, the message of harmony is subject to volution.
Levinson’s
Harmonies
Francis Bacon had indicated the dangers of
tradition in his attack on four idols:
Bacon’s
Novum Organum
The astonishing consequence of Bacon’s
project takes shape in Charles Darwin’s
Origin of Species:
Darwin’s
Survival of the Fittest
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