Abstract
Polyphonic Minds is a refinement and extension of Peter Pesic’s 2014 book, Music and the Making of Modern Science. In Polyphonic Minds, Pesic focuses specifically on polyphony, that is, music involving simultaneous musical lines. But he also extends his exploration to encompass the “many-voicedness” or polyphonicity of human experience, culminating in an interesting discussion of the way the brain itself functions in a polyphonic mode. Pesic teases out the connections between polyphonic music and the natural sciences, philosophy, theology, and psychology, raising important questions about the impact of this complex, if not arcane, musical form.
Although Polyphonic Minds is aimed at a general reader with some background music and science, Pesic’s discussions of Greek cosmology, Oresme, and Kepler will be of particular interest to historians of astronomy. From Boethius to the Herschels, Musica mundana – the music of the spheres – has been a remarkably fruitful idea for cosmology, its “unreasonable effectiveness” rivaling that of mathematics.
The first five chapters of Polyphonic Minds deal with the emergence of polyphony. Pesic looks at the Greek concept of harmonia – “fitting together” – and shows how Augustine and Boethius applied it to the theological and cosmological concerns of their time. He then discusses the flowering of polyphony in thirteenth-century Paris, the influence of scholasticism, the post-Aristotelian physics of Oresme, and the controversies around polyphony.
Chapters 6–10 outline the growing complexity of polyphony in Western Europe and its relationship to the natural philosophies of Descartes, Mersenne, and Kepler. Pesic stresses how deeply engaged were these early “scientists” with music. Pesic then turns to the twentieth century, where the revolution in music launched by the second Vienna School – Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern – saw polyphony and tonality parting ways, even as the discoveries of Helmholtz offered empirical support for human sensations of consonance and dissonance. Pesic concludes his musical examples with a discussion of twentieth-century extensions of the polyphonic concept, including Ligeti’s Poème symphonique for 100 metronomes, Cage’s indeterminate polyphony, and Glenn Gould’s radio polyphony.
The final chapters of Pesic’s book explore the recent neuroscience theory that the brain functions like an orchestra. Pesic helpfully suggests that a deeper understanding of the principles governing multipolyphonic works like Tallis’ famous 40-part Spem in Alium might give researchers greater insight into the almost infinitely complex structures and interactions of the brain.
A subject like musical polyphony is daunting for a reader without musical training, and Pesic has helpfully included a rich variety of musical illustrations, audio examples, images, and diagrams to ensure that the polyphony he describes can be experienced, both aurally and visually. Around his well-chosen compendium of polyphony’s greatest hits, he has assembled an array of key writings in the sciences and arts and uncovered some of the conceptual apparatus behind both polyphonic music and science.
Pesic’s achievement in packing such a broad array of sources into fewer than 300 pages is not to be denied. His insight in linking polyphony and personhood from medieval times to recent neurosciences will open up further avenues of research. The danger in stretching the concept of polyphony to the extremes, however, is that it will become distended beyond any kind of coherence.
For example, Pesic argues that Plato’s Myth of Er contains the first description of polyphony, that is, the tones sung by the eight sirens sitting on the edges of their circles around the spindle of necessity. But Plato states that each of the Sirens on her cosmic revolution utters a single sound, whereas polyphony is generally taken to mean the interweaving of independent melodies. Pesic claims that Plato’s reference to the Sirens “single harmony” implies polyphony; however, this claim rests on an anachronistic definition of harmony. But Pesic, undeterred by the possibility of anachronism, proceeds to find further evidence of a polyphonic “music of the spheres” in the writings of Cicero and Martianus Cappella.
It comes as a surprise, then, when Pesic asserts that Kepler’s Harmony of the World is an argument against a putative ancient view of the universe as monophonic. Pesic’s own theories of Plato’s polyphonic cosmology, his reference to parallels between Ptolemaic planetary motion and the polyphony of Machaut (p. 105), and Kepler’s own critique of Ptolemaic astronomy all militate against such a reading. Pesic is so convinced that Kepler was arguing for a polyphonic universe that he depicts Kepler as remaining “troubled” by the lack of apparent final consonance which might bring the universe to its end, “as Scripture,” Pesic surmises, “seemed to demand” (p. 147). Kepler’s disappointment is a theme carried forward from Pesic’s previous book, Music and the Making of Modern Science. Pesic’s evidence appears to be limited to the final footnote of Kepler’s 1621 revisions of his 1596 publication Mysterium Cosmographicum. But the passage cited evinces no disappointment; on the contrary, Kepler expresses confidence that his final set of calculations put paid to the Platonic year even more conclusively than did his earlier calculations, which had already predicted a boundless universe worthy of the Almighty and “like to the infinite” (Mysterium Cosmographicum: The Secret of the Universe, tr. A. M. Duncan (New York: Abaris 1981), p. 223).
Kepler’s prevailing musical model is in fact more homophonic – that is, a single melody supported by chords – than polyphonic. He notes that the planets mimic the distinctive four parts of a harmonized chorale: a wide-ranging treble and tenor, stable alto line, and leaping bass line. Also, if Kepler’s aim had been to prove the polyphonic structure of the universe, he surely would have been less sanguine about his discovery that the planets wailed rather than sang. Perhaps most importantly, Kepler’s approach was empirical, not symbolic: he had no time for those like Robert Fludd who tried to force the cosmos into a symbolic scheme. Thus, Pesic’s characterization of Kepler’s Harmony of the World as “one of the most extraordinary defenses of polyphony ever written” (p. 145) is not convincing, except perhaps in the very broad sense that the universe contains many objects in simultaneous motion, some of which are in harmonious relationships, as demonstrated by Kepler’s Third Law.
Pesic extends his study of polyphony “far beyond the traditional limits of music” (p. 209) in order to accommodate not only twentieth-century polyphonic compositions but also non-Western polyphony. In Chapter 13, he discusses Max Weber’s view of music within a process of social rationalization. It is worth noting that if Pesic had adopted Weber’s definition of polyphony, “several voices of equal standing run side by side, harmonically linked” (p. 238), he would have had an easier time connecting polyphony to developments in early modern science. Although Weber’s writings served to promulgate the superiority and uniqueness of western rationalized society, his definition of polyphony at least provides a clear and focused category for comparison and study.
Was it simply the feature of “many-voicedness” that made music such a powerful analogy for the natural sciences, or was there something about “Western” polyphony that helped foster “Western” science? Pesic is troubled that even in neuroscience, researchers seem to be falling back onto concepts from “traditional polyphony” such as melody or orchestral section leaders. He suggests that his broader field of view will provide more valuable polyphonic models for the sciences. It remains to be seen whether the hundred wind-up metronomes of Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique will prove as rich a source of insights for neuroscience as a “traditional” symphonic poem. Nonetheless, Polyphonic Minds: Music of the Hemispheres is a welcome reminder of music’s enduring significance to the history of the sciences.