Music: in aesthetics, science, and "the spheres"

The Naked Saint and the Foundations of Ancient Greece relating to Music

The moral of The Naked Saint by Wackenroder is to explain how music can change us. Once the summer moonlight was so beautiful and the love created by the lovers on a boat nearby was so magnificent that music played. Once that music was heard, the naked saint was no longer tied to the giant wheel of Time, and the saint was released from the enchantment that gave it anxiety and made it crazy. It turned into a beautiful angel and danced up into the heavens. The moral of the story is to not let time overcome us, but that music and love can calm and change even the craziest being. Also, there is some irony in the fact that the naked saint was so angered by how others lived so carefree or by doing jobs he thought was worthless, when he himself was spinning a giant wheel of Time and so concerned about Time he couldn’t enjoy anything and was extremely unhappy.

This relates a lot to how the Ancient Greeks thought, even if it was talking more about aesthetics when the Greeks thought of music as more of a science. It especially related to a story about how the mathematician Pythagoras used music to save a member of his community from committing arson. Pythagoras played a different mode of music (not the Phrygian mode) and the youth became calm. This was another example of how music could change someone and the effects music has.

Also, in the story the naked saint is outside and the moonlight and probably the stars beauty was part of what created the music. In Ancient Greece, Pythagoras was an astronomer and musician, and music was viewed as a science as well as an art. When the stars and planets rotated in balanced proportions they made heavenly music- the music of the spheres, as said in “Music in Greek Philosophy,” just like in the story of the naked saint. Greek philosophers spoke of harmony throughout the universe, and how music on earth was simply the audible expression of that harmony. They believed by studying the ratios created by music we could comprehend the secrets of the universe. At the end of The Naked Saint, the saint travels to the heavens and it seems he fully understands the secrets of the universe now just like the Ancient Greeks believed music could.

Later, music was considered one of the seven liberal arts, still a science because all of the liberal arts required critical thinking and would free the mind. A Roman music theorist named Boethius also developed that music was divided into three general types: music of the spheres, music of the human body, and earthly vocal and instrumental music. He also showed a difference between someone who studies music and one who performs it, all in his manuscripts the Fundamentals of Music in the 5^th and 6^th century. The music from the naked saint would be part of the music of the spheres.