Oddcast episode

November 27, 2024

Sebastián Moro Tornese on Anagogic Music in Ancient Platonism

Pythagoras rocking the little lute, Münster Chorgestühl (1469-1474)

[Be sure to download the handout under Recommended Reading below; it gives numerous illustrative passages from ancient authors]

Sebastián Moro did his doctoral work on the musical theory of Proclus, so we start there, looking at Proclus’ mature Platonist synthesis on musical matters from the end of antiquity. Proclus frames his musical notions (of course) in the context of notional Orphic and Pythagorean traditions (we say ‘notional’ not because these weren’t real traditions in antiquity, but because they didn’t really go back to Orpheus or, probably, to Pythagoras, but rather to the literature travelling under the names of these two founder-figures) and in the context of Plato as a recipient of the teachings of Orpheus and Pythagoras. For Proclus, music (that is, μουσική, a concept with a much greater semantic sphere than the English ‘music’, having fundamentally to do with the Muses and their inspirational action) exists at all ontological levels, and serves as a unifying structure to reality as a whole. As such, music proper – that is, the actual deployment of rhythm and pitch and so forth – can serve as a method for henōsis, unification of the soul, or, put another way, or ascent to the higher realities. We discuss Proclus’ metaphysics of music, found especially in his Timæus-commentary, and his discussion of the anagogic implementation of practical music as a means to cultivating the virtues in the soul, found mostly in his writings on the Republic (and which maps onto the scale of virtues discussed in our previous Oddcast-episode with Michæl Griffin).

We then jump back in time all the way to the murky evidence for early Pythagoreanism, Plato’s crucial ‘Pythagoreanising’ passages (notably in Republic and Timæus), and enjoy some very interesting readings of Plato through a somewhat Proclean lens, but also one rooted in music performance.

(This leads to a digression on the ancient Greek modes and their various modern analogues and attempted reconstructions).

We then survey crucial works of antiquity dealing with music which bridge the gap between Plato and Proclus, including the early academics, Heracleides of Pontos, and Aristotle, Plutarch of Cheironeia, Galen, Neopythagorean writers like Moderatus of Gades and Nicomachus of Gerasa, Numenius of Apamea, Theon of Smyrna, and then the Latinate tradition represented by Martianus Capella and Boethius. Returning to Hellenic Platonism, we focus a bit on Iamblichus, and then sign off with a promise to meet again and discuss the afterlife of these ideas in later esoteric thinkers.

Interview Bio:

Sebastián Moro Tornese is a scholar working on Platonism and music. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he holds a PhD from Royal Holloway,University of London, on the subject of the Neoplatonic philosophy of music, exploring the concept of cosmic harmony in Proclus’ commentaries on Plato’s Timaeus and Republic. His postdoctoral research delved into the philosophical implications of Pythagorean and Late Platonist musical thought, studying concepts such as universal harmony, cosmic sympathy and the musical conception of the anima mundi and scala naturæ in the works of Latinate figures such as Llull, Ficino, and Agrippa. He is currently researching what kinds of music the ancient theurgists were using in their rituals [I’d buy that album] and publishing pieces on Neoplatonic Music and Ideas.

Works Cited in this Episode:

Primary:

Aristotle, on the soul, III.4, 429a18-24, says that the intellect is all things potentially. Aristotle complains about what he sees as the confusion in the Pythagoreans’ assertion that reality is number: Metaph. 985b23-990a4.

Al-Kindi on the symbolic character of the strings of the ‘oud: see Peter Adamson. Al-Kindi. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007, p. 173.

The Chaldæan Oracles on the noetic bees: Fr. 37: And (we must) recall the very (words) which are found in the Chaldean Oracles‘. “The Intellect of the Father, while thinking with its vigorous will, shot forth the multiformed Ideas. All these leapt forth from one Source, for from the Father comes both will and perfection. But the Ideas were divided by the Intelligible Fire and allotted to other intelligibles. For the Ruler placed before the multiformed cosmos an intelligible and imperishable model from which, along a disorderly track, the world with its form hastened to appear, engraved with multiform Ideas. There is one Source for these, from which other terrible (Ideas), divided, shoot forth, breaking themselves on the bodies of the worlds. Those which are borne around the frightful wombs like a swarm of bees—flashing here and there in various directions—are the intelligible Thoughts from the Paternal Source, which pluck in abundance the flower of fire from the acme of sleepless Time. The first self-perfected Source of the Father spouted forth these primordial Ideas.” (trans. Majercik).

Iamblichus on Nicomachus on harmonia/music as the union of opposites: Intr. Nicom. Arith. 73.

Marinus on Proclus’ arrival at Athens (in the interview we slightly mix up the incident): Life of Proclus 10.37 ad fin.

Philolaos of Kroton, fr. 6 = Stobaeus, Eclogae 1.21.7d (1.188.14 Wachsmuth). See now, for edition and translation, C.A. Human. Philolaus of Croton: Pythagorean and Presocratic. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993.

Plotinus

on the intelligible music: Ennead VI.7[38]12.20 ad fin: [20] ‘That is to say, to seek the origin of ‘animal’ is the same as to seek the origin of life, and of universal Life, and of universal Soul, and of the eminently-universal Nous (there being no poverty or lack of resource there, all things there being full and, as it were, seething with Life). [All things] have a sort of flow from a single spring, not as from a single breath or [25] a single heat, but as if there were a single universal quality containing and preserving all the qualities within itself, that of sweetness along with fragrance, being the quality of wine simultaneously with being all the possibilities of tasting, and acts of seeing colours, and what is known through touch; being what hearing hears and, simultaneously, all the melodies and every rhythm.’
on the sphere: Enn. V.8[31]9.
on the sympathetic resonances between strings of the lyros: Enn. IV.4[28]41.
Etymology of Apollōn as a-pollōn, ‘not multiple’: Enn. V.5[32]6.

Theon of Smyrna’s Mathematics Useful for Understanding Plato: Eduard Hiller, editor. Theonis Smyrnæi, philosophi platonici, expositio rerum mathematicarum ad legendum Platonem utilium. Teubner, Leipzig, 1878 .

Timæus of Locri’s Book: see W. Marg, editor. Timaeus Locrus: De natura mundi et animae: Überlieferung, Testimonia, Text und Übersetzung von W. Marg. Editio maior. Leiden, 1972.

Secondary:

Sebastián Moro’s PhD thesis, Philosophy of Music in the Neoplatonic Tradition: Theories of Music and Harmony in Proclus’ Commentaries on Plato’s “Timaeus” and “Republic”, can be downloaded here.

Paul Hindemith’s opera Die Harmonie der Welt.

Mozart’s Il sogno di Scipione.

Andrew Barker. The Science of Harmonics in Classical Greece. The University Press, Cambridge, 2007.

Walter Burkert. Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1972. Translated by Edward L. Minar.

Jacques Chailley. L’imbroglio des modes. Éditions Alphonse Leduc, 1960.

Alain Daniélou. Music and the Power of Sound: The Influence of Tuning and Interval on Consciousness. Inner Traditions/Bear, 1995.

Dominic O’Meara. Pythagoras Revived : Mathematics and Philosophy in Late Antiquity. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1989.

R. Murray Schafer. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Alfred Knopf, 1977.

Themes

Aristotle, Boethius, Cosmic Ascent, Hypnagogy, Iamblichus, Interview, iunges, Late Platonism, Liberal Arts, Middle Platonism, Music, Nicomachus of Gerasa, Numenius, Orpheus, Philolaus of Kroton, Philosophy, Plato, Plotinus, Plutarch of Cheironeia, Posidonius, Proclus, Pythagorean Tradition, Theurgy, voces magicæ