Perhaps one of the last of the ‘Renaissance men’, Fludd....“lived at the very end of that era in which it was possible for one mind to encompass the whole of learning...... His goal was nothing less than to summarize the knowledge of both the universe and man - of macrocosm and microcosm - and the relations betwen them.”*
- Godwin*
*Robert Fludd, Hermetic Philosopher and Surveyor of Two Worlds by Joscelyn Godwin, Shambhala Publ., Thames & Hudson, Boulder, CO, 1979
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The Temple of Music - Robert Fludd (1574 - 1637)
“The column on the far left shows the Divine Monochord - a device Fludd incorporated in many of his drawings. On the porch is a scene of Pythagoras discovering the harmonic proportions in the blacksmith’s shop. Above this are Crantor’s cosmogonic lamda in explication of the Timaeus (although the engraver got the numbers wrong) and a checkerboard scheme that functions as an aid to musical composition showing which notes harmonize with one another. A clock illustrates the relative time value of the notes, and the columns and rows of bricks teach the scales. Finally a Muse stands in an alcove pointing to a model composition based upon the principles described by the temple.” *
*The Music of the Spheres, Music, Science and the Natural Order of the Universe by Jamie James, Copernicus, New York, 1993
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In those days it was a common practice to study mathematics, which consisted of arithmetic and geometry, along with music and astronomy. Certain geometric relationships and numeric principles were considered so universal that they were thought to be divine in origin and so were applied across this “quadrivium” of subjects. Eventually these disciplines would begin to drift apart and be treated as separate distinct areas of inquiry. Only in the last quarter of the 20th century have we begun to rediscover how much the deep structures of number, music and cosmology do indeed have in common.
Robert Fludd was a member of the Rosicrucians and one of the ways adepts would commit vast stores of knowledge to memory was to use mnemonic aids popular at the time called Memory Palaces. His “Temple of Music” is such a tool and contains within it the basics of music theory as it would be understood in the 17th century.
