The tradition of musica

By Luther's time, music theory already had a long history of rooting music in cosmic order and proportion, and a whole system of thought and educational discipline. The study of musica was at root an investigation into numerical relations – not only, and indeed not principally, the relations of pitches and rhythms produced by instruments, but of fundamental mathematical proportionalities. Musical sound was a participation in this greater, primal harmonisation, and a first step on the elevation of the intellect to contemplate this higher, incorporeal mathematical order.

The origins of musica are found among the Pythagoreans, who gained a reputation for researching number theory and music, and for discovering that key musical consonances could be expressed in pleasingly simple numerical ratios (a note with its octave as 2:1, with its fifth as 3:2, with its fourth 4:3). In this line of thinking, music gains its delight, worth and power from its resonance with a mathematical coherence intrinsic to the fabric of the cosmos. Such a principle is alive in Plato's imagination also, as Henry Chadwick summarises:

In this tradition, astronomical order is itself charged with musical harmony; musical sound is a microcosm of, and participation in, that which is absolute in the macrocosmic planetary order. Plato was also aware of music's affective power, for good or ill, treating sounded music with suspicion.Footnote ³ This power could be harnessed through performing appropriate ‘modes’ (forms of musical scale) for different effects – the Phrygian for courage, the Ionian for relaxing, etc.Footnote ⁴ Due to music's persuasive power, Plato held that one ought not to aim for pleasure in music, but for truth:

In this view, musical sound's aural qualities ought to be submitted to an intellectual ordering contemplated in the cosmos’ higher harmony: the ‘real’ music is an incorporeal harmony which is perceived through the physical sonorities of creation.

Augustine's treatise De musica transmitted this approach into Christian thought, maintaining that the principal value of sounded music was as a means to the contemplation of that on which the consonance of all things was based. The enquiring student of musical number ought ‘to move on from the corporeal to the incorporeal’.Footnote ⁶ In his later Confessions, Augustine is delighted by, yet suspicious of, music's emotive power, fluctuating ‘between the danger of pleasure and the experience of the beneficent effect’ of music.Footnote ⁷ For him, the power of sounded music must be tamed by the rigours of the intellect's contemplation. It is something to go ‘through’ and ‘beyond’: the aural qualities of music have their value in resonating with, and leading us toward, a reality beyond themselves.Footnote ⁸

It is through Boethius that this tradition became firmly established within medieval musical thought and educational practice, and comes to bear on the thought-world of Luther. Boethius, in his treatise De institutione musica, is largely disinterested in musical sounds in their own right. Boethius articulated a threefold division of music, as Calvin Bower succinctly summarises:

The goal of studying these musicae was to ascend from the lower to the higher. Boethius agrees with Plato and Augustine that sounded music, through the effects of modes, has power to influence the human listener because ‘the order of our soul and body seems to be related somehow through those same ratios by which … sets of pitches, suitable for melody, are joined together and united’.Footnote ¹⁰ Exhibiting the same fundamental harmony, the higher musica provides order to the lower – the cosmic to the human and instrumental – the lower leading therefore to the higher.

To this main set of traditions several other voices emerge in contrast, in ways that will also assist in bringing Luther's thought into relief against this background. First, Aristotle. The Platonic concept of a ‘music of the spheres’ was based on the observation that the planetary spheres moved; that sound is produced by movement (of one thing, such as air, against another); and therefore that the moving planets must emit a colossal concordant sound.Footnote ¹¹ This begged the question as to how it was that the planets seemed silent to the ear. Pythagoreans held that humankind is deaf to this music because it is always there. Aristotle, though, in De caelo, rejects the idea of planetary music as absurd: ‘melodious and poetical’ but not a ‘true account of the facts’.Footnote ¹²

Aristotle's main writings on music in his Politics are interested in the role of music in three main areas. These areas are not unimportant to the Platonic tradition, but in receiving Aristotle's attention over and above any concern with speculative musical cosmology, they create a strikingly different metaphysical emphasis to music. The first is the area of affect. Aristotle is sure that music affects the hearer, and that the harmonious pleasure it affords us merits its importance. Modes had associated affects for Aristotle as for Plato. Aristotle, however, held that all modes ought to be used since, with good education, music did not truly have a ‘vulgarizing effect’ of which to be suspicious.Footnote ¹³ Aristotle is concerned with the affinity between musical harmony and the soul's harmony, and not with the foundation of both in a scheme of cosmic music.Footnote ¹⁴ The second area, linked to the first, is character formation. Music can help in forming right judgements, and is vital to Aristotle's educational outlook, since music teaches the pursuit of leisure.Footnote ¹⁵ The two areas defined thus far beg a question: should one be able to (and teach children to) play and sing, or only to listen to music? Thus the third area concerns musical practice. In distinction from Plato's preference for intellectual musica, and contrasted with Boethius’ later concept of the ‘true’ musician as one who does not play but listens and judges theoretically, Aristotle advocates practical performance:Footnote ¹⁶

Aristotle, then, rejected the Pythagorean tradition's cosmic assertions as speculative rhetoric, preferring pragmatic discussions about music's usefulness and educational potential. He appreciates music's pleasurable affective power and is not so suspicious of it. Furthermore, he advocates an emphasis on practical music-making and the effects of sonorous harmony on the soul's own harmony.

The second figure of distinction who departs from the main musica tradition is Aristoxenus, Aristotle's pupil. In Elementa harmonica he criticised the relegation of sensory musical phenomena in favour of ‘fabricated rational principles’.Footnote ¹⁸ Pythagorean theory paid much attention to addressing the various difficulties of formulating, from the simple consonant ratios, a scheme of interval multiplications that accounted for the presence of ‘irrational numbers’ further along in the harmonic calculations. Aristoxenus criticised this approach, arguing that the ear ought to be sovereign, not, in Chadwick's sharp words, ‘the mathematical reason with its doctrinaire imposition of abstract theory’.Footnote ¹⁹ Aristoxenus retains an emphasis on ratio, but notes that the simplicity of the fundamental musical ratios is only appealing since the ear judges the consonance. His critique was that musical coherence was not dictated by mathematical theory, which became untenable in the face of more complex sonic evidence, but by the ear's perception of the sensory phenomenon of consonance.

The third figure to consider, as we edge toward Luther, is the early humanist music theorist Johannes Tinctoris (c.1435−1511), who demonstrates a late medieval turn from the Pythagoreo-BoethianFootnote ²⁰ conceptions of musica to a new musical aesthetics. In The Art of Counterpoint he applauds Aristotle's critique of the celestial harmony, emphasising that ‘there is neither actual nor potential sound in the heavens’.Footnote ²¹ Tinctoris criticised the interest in musica mundana over musica instrumentalis maintained by other contemporary humanists who held on to a qualified Pythagoreo-Boethian approach; he insisted that if only earthly instruments sound harmony, then studying music should happen with the ears, rather than the mind's reason.Footnote ²²

These voices are precursors of Luther's engagement with Pythagoreo-Boethian traditions: Aristotle for his critique of abstract musical contemplation and preference for practical questions of music-making; Aristoxenus for his emphasis on the sensory phenomena of sound; Tinctoris in bringing these Aristotelian and Aristoxenian emphases to bear on an early humanist rebuttal of musica.

Luther's engagement with musica

Textual evidence of the extent to which Luther knew of musica suggests that he is aware of the concept of music as a hermeneutic for foundational cosmic coherence. I will argue, however, that this claim must be qualified, and that recent scholarship has overstated the argument that Luther was influenced by and in turn propounded Pythagoreo-Boethian approaches. In what follows, I shall argue that whatever metaphysics of music Luther may have held to is based in his theology of the created cosmos, but in markedly different ways than those advocated in most musica traditions. Rather, Luther's view of music is profoundly material and creaturely: the cosmos’ musical potential is to be formed and fulfilled through the devotional, linguistic and artistic lives of creatures.

I turn now to examine the textual evidence of Luther's engagement with musica. The concept of cosmic sound emerges in his Lectures on Genesis. His comments on Genesis 2:21 show an awareness of the concept of the ‘music of the spheres’:

Luther is clearly aware of the Pythagorean concept of a musical harmony built into the cosmos, and of the explanation that humanity does not ‘hear’ this music due to familiarity.Footnote ²⁴ Like Aristotle and Tinctoris, Luther argues that this does not refer to actual sound, but is a poetic portrayal of the wonder of the created order and humanity's negligence thereof. In this respect, Luther rather likes the idea, provided it does not result in undue speculation about celestial motions and ratios. Elsewhere in his Lectures on Genesis, though, Luther becomes more critical. He considers Dionysius’ interest in the heavenly orders and celestial spheres to be ‘the silliest prattle’ and Dionysius’ attempts to project earthly (and ecclesiastical) order from an order discerned by cosmic speculation to be ‘trifles worthy for the papists to learn’.Footnote ²⁵ As to the discourses on celestial motions in Plato's Timaeus, these are to be ‘entirely rejected’.Footnote ²⁶

If there is any glimpse in Luther of a musical cosmology, it is found in his Preface to Georg Rhau's Symphoniae iucundae (hereafter Preface). In the Preface Luther opens with the highest praise of music, then begins his examination by noting music's foundation in creation: ‘First then, looking at music itself, you will find that from the beginning of the world it has been instilled and implanted in all creatures, individually and collectively. For nothing is without sound or harmony.’Footnote ²⁷ Luther's original Latin reads Nihil enim est sine sono, seu numero sonoro (‘For nothing is without sound, or sounding number’).Footnote ²⁸ Here Luther sees music as inherent within the fabric of creation – a creation that is naturally noisy, it seems – and intimates that sound has a numerical basis; thus the numerical orderedness of created things commits them to music. This suggests an essential connection between music and mathematics; however, Miikka Anttila counsels against reading anything properly Pythagorean into the comment.Footnote ²⁹ Indeed, this isolated phrase is not developed at all either in the Preface or elsewhere in Luther's writings to advocate the sort of cosmic approach to music that we have seen of the Pythagoreo-Boethian tradition.

Andreas Loewe, however, has recently argued in detail that the Preface firmly adopts Pythagoreo-Boethian traditions. Loewe is in good company in the scholarly community in arguing so: Jeremy Begbie and Paul Helmer both argue toward this conclusion. Since Loewe offers the most thorough examination and evidence, I shall concentrate on his essay ‘“Musica est Optimum”: Martin Luther's Theory of Music’.Footnote ³⁰ Luther, according to Loewe, follows a classification of ‘natural music’ (musica naturalis) and ‘artificial [or composed] music’ (musica artificialis).Footnote ³¹ Musica naturalis, Loewe argues, is then subdivided into categories that came to Luther from Adam von Fulda's treatise, On Music (1490). Von Fulda, ‘broadly following Boethius, identified distinctive subgroups of natural music: musica mundana, the sounds of the natural world; musica humana, the music that humans and animals make when they laugh, cry or speak; and musica caelestis, the music of heaven’.Footnote ³² Loewe envisages a structure in the Preface that traces these three types of musica naturalis and then turns to musica artificialis.Footnote ³³ Loewe's association of these classifications with the Preface, however, is problematic, and these problems undermine his conclusion that Luther's theology of music was based on Boethian musica as transmitted by Von Fulda and others. I shall examine the problems of locating this classificatory scheme in the Preface and in due course offer an alternative exegesis of the text and a different view of Luther's metaphysics of music.

First then, whilst the musica mundana section identified by Loewe is concerned with creation and mentions, as we have seen, ‘sounding number’, there is no talk otherwise of planetary or cosmic music; the phrase ‘sounding number’ is epexegetical, isolated and undeveloped. The comment is followed immediately by a remark about motion and the sound of air: ‘Even the air, which of itself is invisible and imperceptible to all our sense, and which, since it lacks both voice and speech, is the least musical of all things, becomes sonorous, audible, and comprehensible when it is set in motion.’Footnote ³⁴ So in mentioning ‘sounding number’ Luther is likely more interested in the material link between the mechanics of motion and the production of sound than he is in incorporeal number (and indeed, it is sounding number he mentions; musica caelestis does not, problematically, ‘sound’). Von Fulda's concept of musica mundana includes the ‘music of the spheres’,Footnote ³⁵ which is absent from Luther's Preface; and, as we have seen above, he affords such notions little credibility elsewhere. Secondly, Loewe's identification of a musica caelestis section is unsubstantiated. In the relevant section Luther considers music as ‘a mistress and governess of those human emotions’, as a way ‘to comfort the sad, to terrify the happy’, given by God to move humanity to praise him.Footnote ³⁶ Loewe consistently attributes Luther's assertions about music's affective power to musica caelestis, without acknowledging that Luther himself draws no such terminological or categorical distinction, referring only ever to ‘music’ in general, and that nowhere in the Preface are heaven, the skies or any supra-earthly realm brought into view. Loewe's analysis fails to note that a whole portion of Von Fulda's musica classifications is absent from the Preface, namely that of cosmic music and the intellectual horizons of music's order, and thus Loewe too straightforwardly reads Luther to be a Boethian.Footnote ³⁷

A more telling way of showing this is to employ Boethius’ classifications as a lens, rather than Von Fulda's. Boethius, as I have noted, adopted a simple three-tier structure, which relates to Von Fulda's like so:

Undeniably present in the Preface is musica in instrumentis constituta, since Luther marvels at the musical sounds of birds and human voice, and commends the human vocation of shaping music into an art.Footnote ³⁹ Music is also considered as a force for the inner harmony of the human (musica humana), in its governance of emotions.Footnote ⁴⁰ With the Boethian scheme in view, what is markedly absent is musica mundana, which, in a narrower sense than Von Fulda's, encompasses only the cosmic category of music found in the ordered proportionality of creation, and of the planets in particular. Musica mundana is, for Boethius, the fundamental form of music which all other forms of harmony reflect: Luther, however, intimates no such musical hierarchy. Tested against either of these schemes, Luther's Preface tellingly omits any notion of music's reference to some higher order of intellectualised harmony that transcends sensory life. Loewe's application of Von Fulda's scheme to Luther's preface is not borne out by the text, and the application of Boethius’ scheme highlights that it is precisely this cosmic rooting of music's power in concepts of celestial harmony, ontologically prior in the musica tradition, that is tellingly missing from Luther's approach.

The nature of music in Luther's thought

If Luther did not subscribe in any real sense to traditional assertions about the ‘music of the spheres’, what metaphysical grounding does he give to music? Luther founds his understanding of music on a theology of creation, viewing music as gift, and therefore intrinsically good. In the Preface, this is developed through five sections, which are here summarised in the order in which he develops them, and three of which will be expanded upon below to synopsise Luther's metaphysical vision of music. First, God created the ‘stuff’ of the earth with an inbuilt musicality that is a joyous and wonderful gift.Footnote ⁴¹ Secondly, humans are ‘gifted’ in the further sense that the human voice offers musical possibilities that are unfathomable and unmatched within all of creation, and humans reciprocate this gift through their praise of the creator.Footnote ⁴² Thirdly, music is given by God as a ‘mistress and governess’ of human emotions, by which God tempers the human heart.Footnote ⁴³ Fourthly, music is given that it may be joined with the gift of language, and thus is a gift given for proclaiming the Word of God.Footnote ⁴⁴ Fifthly, music is given by God that it may catalyse the creative enterprises of humans in their artistic vocation.Footnote ⁴⁵

Notably, for Luther, the more human and artistic music becomes, the more it is shot through with God's goodness, power and purpose; the more it resonates with and amplifies other gifts given by God, and so calls into fulfilment humanity's broader giftedness. The first, second and fifth of these senses of music as ‘gift’ will be considered presently, since they together form Luther's metaphysics of music. (The third and fourth senses, though founded on and framed by the other three senses, more closely express their outworkings in music's impact on the human person.Footnote ⁴⁶)

In his Preface, Luther first observes that ‘from the beginning of the world [music] has been instilled and implanted in all creatures … For nothing is without sound or harmony’. Air itself, though ‘the least musical of all things’, becomes ‘sonorous, audible, and comprehensible when it is set in motion’.Footnote ⁴⁷ This association of music and motion is found in the Pythagoreo-Boethian traditions about moving planets producing sound, though notably Luther, like Tinctoris, draws attention to the sounds of the air around him, rather than the (silent) stars above. Music in creation is a gift of potential: the material order is ready and ripe to burst into sonorous beauty, seemingly out of nothing. Elsewhere, Luther, on hearing a group of singers, commented, ‘So our God, in this life in the shithouse, has given such noble tasks, which will happen in eternity: is this here what is most perfect and interesting of all? This, though, amounts to prime matter [materia prima]’.Footnote ⁴⁸ The term here may refer to music's existence being basic within material creation, as Loewe suggests.Footnote ⁴⁹ Or, if we render materia prima something like ‘a foremost subject-matter’, it may serve to reinforce his words about music as a gift to accompany us into eternity. In his Preface, Luther uses the same phrase, but of the human voice, though in Luther's Works it is translated as ‘the original components of the human voice’.Footnote ⁵⁰ If, with Loewe, we allow that the term materia prima might be being used by Luther in the more technical Aristotelian sense, the assertion of music as ‘prime matter’ implies that it exists foundationally within the material world: sounded music is neither God's afterthought nor humanity's invention. This assertion is decidedly different from those cosmic theories of music which rendered the universe musical by virtue of its distillation in dematerialised proportionalities. Whilst in both Luther's and the Pythagoreo-Boethian schemes music is foundational in creation, Luther's intimations about music as ‘prime matter’, and the sonority of all created matter, weight his emphasis on the ‘stuff’ itself – that is, on physicality and its sensory phenomena, not on a transcendent reality lying beyond the material. In this regard Luther's approach shares with Aristotle, Aristoxenus and Tinctoris a chief interest in music as sounded. In Luther's view, the ‘stuff’ of creation is bursting with musical potential. As Anttila notes, ‘Music is a completely outward, physical phenomenon … Luther wanted to emphasize the importance of the physical world as the bearer of spiritual reality.’Footnote ⁵¹ For Luther, musical power is invested in the cosmos’ materiality.

Even more marvellous for Luther, as he goes on to say in his Preface, is the music of living things, ‘especially birds’.Footnote ⁵² Luther makes much of the example of birds, including several lines of his poem ‘Dame Music’.Footnote ⁵³ In his lectures on the Sermon on the Mount, he goes beyond the trusting faith of the birds which the text implies, and considers their musical praise:

The birds stand as an example of both the continual disposition of praise and the actual resounding music that ought to be automatic for life in the gospel. They are creatures in whom Luther sees the free resonance of that joyful musicality that God has ‘instilled and implanted’ in all of creation.Footnote ⁵⁵ Here, Luther provides another hierarchical subversion of the Pythagoreo-Boethian tradition: rather than the planets producing abundant music to which humanity has become deaf, it is the humble sparrow whose music is most notable in all creation, yet whose witness humans fail to hear and heed. Luther insists that what is most importantly musical about the universe – what can be taken as an example or, indeed, the example – is the little bird chirping outside the window, whose song is unrelenting, happy and involves such gusto that his whole body is caught up in it.

In both these subversions, Luther suggests an incarnational theology of music: the ‘real’ music is found in the here and now, in the musical sounds we find all around us in animate and inanimate created things. Albert Blackwell posits a distinction between creational theologies of music: the Pythagoreo-Boethian traditions focus on ‘transcending contingency’, whereas an ‘incarnational’ tradition focuses on ‘manifesting transcendence’ in material sound.Footnote ⁵⁶ The latter, Blackwell notes, has origins in Aristotle and Aristoxenus who, as we have seen, were concerned with musical sounds themselves, and insisted that any intellectual rumination on musical theory be anchored in and submissive to the ear's experience of actual musical phenomena.Footnote ⁵⁷ Luther's concern with the physical immanence of God's gift of music shares this concentration on the integrity of musical phenomena in the physical, material order, and on the aural experience of musical beauty.

Luther develops this position as he considers the gift of the human voice in creation, compared to which birdsong and whistling air ‘hardly [deserve] the name of music’. The voice is, for Luther, a simple instrument but a profoundly mesmerising one:

The singing voice – and still at this juncture in the Preface, Luther is only referring to the bare human voice, not yet to crafted musicianship – is, for Luther, not an imitation of or secondary to the foundational musicality built into the physical universe. The singing voice is itself, as we noted above, materia prima, yet is an even more wonderful gift against which the more basic sounds and chirps of creation pale almost, but not quite, into insignificance. If all creation has an inbuilt musical potential, the human voice is the instrument in which this potential becomes more actualised.

Furthermore, then, the climax of God's provision of music, for Luther, is musica artificialis, in which the abilities of the voice are crafted through artisanship into a work of beauty. Toward the end of the Preface, Luther writes:

Artisanship is a vocational gift given to humans that they might ‘improve the gifts of creation’.Footnote ⁶⁰ God calls humanity into musical activity, and thus it is insufficient simply to say that nothing is without sounding number. Whereas Calvin and other reformers insisted on restricting music to simple forms, in order to keep its power in check, Luther is keen to see compositional skills employed to heighten music's beauty and power. This is not mere entertainment, but a given vocation that humanity ought not to shun, since the correcting and developing of natural music reveals God's ‘absolute and perfect wisdom’. As Anttila notes, only in this final section on musica artificialis does Luther refer to music as a work of God.Footnote ⁶¹ Music not only resides as potential within the fabric of created ‘stuff’, and sings out from creatures great and small, but is also pre-eminently brought into fulfilment as humans apply their creative faculties in shaping what God has given into forms of music which display the glory of God, the providence of God and at the same time become offerings of praise and glory to God.

Luther anchors his account of music in a theology of creation which emphasises the musical potential of all created matter. His vision of created musicality is deeply committed to music's physical immediacy and sees the profundity of music's allure in that which passes into our ears. In this regard, Luther resonates with the approach of Aristotle, Aristoxenus and Tinctoris to the integrity of the musical encounter of the listener (thus locating in the listener the judgement, power and purpose of music), rather than the Pythagoreo-Boethian approach to the musicality of the universe, in which the mind's journey beyond sensuality and toward abstracted contemplation is prioritised (which would thus locate in abstracted ‘form’ the judgement, power and purpose of music). In Luther's scheme, sound itself is to be trusted and is of chief interest; it is the sound of music that brings music's pleasure, its purpose and its power. This incarnational emphasis is integrated into an account in which humanity is the climax of creation, and human activity an ongoing sharing in God's creativity, bringing the gift of musical potential to fulfilment through the gift of musical vocation.