Customer Reviews

The Music of the Spheres: Music, Science, and the Natural Order of the Universe

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I began reading this book with the highest of expectations, based both upon the credentials of the author and the reviews contained herein. However, now that I have completed it, I must rate it with some personal disappointment. Although the book is some 230 pages long and covers several millennia worth of history, its structure lends the feeling that it is a collection of condensed articles taken from the pages of periodicals. Anyone who reads Discovery Magazine will immediately recognize this factually succinct trait.

And succinct is what best describes the depth of information presented by this book. It provides a very thorough lineage of relevant historical figures throughout the ages, but sadly it only gives the majority of them a cursory mention. While he devotes alot of attention to the specific numerological devices of Pythagoras and such, very little of their ideas are easily comprehendible according to his fragmented explanations, and the reader must go to an outside source to grasp their true mechanics. The passages concerning musical scales suffers especially from a lack of explanation, and if I had not already possessed an insight into their nature, I would have been utterly befuddled about what Mr. James was trying to tell me.

Further on, the author begins to insert his personal opinions about the people he is describing. In an interesting chronicle of a minor feud between Kepler and Fludd, Mr. James draws sides immediately and nearly dismisses Fludd as a mystic who merely regurgitated archaic knowledge, but only after slight after slight does he admit, seemingly regrettably and with an apologetic tone, that the very crux of Kepler's argument was wrong. And worse still, near the end he offers the opinion that Brahms was the `most cosmic' composer of all time, and then in no way supports his conjecture. It is incredibly frustrating to try and figure out why the author feels the way he does about almost every subject he brings up, an obstacle made even more difficult given the author's semi bombastic, abstruse sentence structure. A notable exception to this is his chapter on Newton, which was the most thorough and intelligible character description offered.

In summation, the phrase `A brief and cursory history of' should be inserted before its title to give any potential reader an accurate idea of what this interesting-yet uneven and biased-account of the dissolution of and between science and music achieves. It mentions fascinating concepts and ideas, but altogether it does little more than refer to them with a glib capacity.

This is a beautifully written exposition of both the harmony between music and science before the Renaissance, and the separation of the two into divergent disciplines after. James captures the beauty of the beliefs of the early musician-scientists, and how their contemplations sought to explain the meaning of life, God, and (like the Unification Theory of today) all existence. It is a fascinating story of how, one by one, scientific proofs separated science from the arts as knowledge increased. The book is well-explained, stimulating to the higher brain, and soothing to the lower brain. (Sorry, but if you get that, then you get it--and the book.) A rare non-fiction in that I never put it down.

Jamie James did not write, in this work, the definitive exposition on The Music of the Spheres. What is contained in this work is, however, an excellent introduction into the topic in my opinion. Many of the key players are mentioned and a bit of biographical background information is presented with them which provides a good reference point for more reading.

As a good introduction should, this book starts in the ancient past with Pythagoras and Plato and moves right up to the 20th century. There is a bit, perhaps, of editorial bias on some of the characters that have been involved in this topic throughout history; nevertheless, one is not put off on anyone mentioned by the book if someone decided they'd like more than an introductory course in the Music of the Spheres.

As it was my intention, before even reading this book, to look deep into this subject, I was not put off at all by the historical coverage of the topic as opposed to a more practical treatment. It's not an in-depth practical work on the Music of the Spheres, but as an introduction to the topic and coverage of some of the historical and biographical background, I was not left disappointed.

A very interesting read, it fueled the desire to look deeper into the subject and helped shed a little background and perspective on a few of the historical figures connected with the topic. Worth the read, even twice.

The Music of The Spheres is a Classic and must-have for those interested in the fields of Music, Physics, Mathematics and those in related fields. I got this book at a great price and very fast delivery.

Today I got my copy of Jamie James' The Music of the Spheres. My alarm bell started ringing when I glanced over Jamie's short biography. At the time he was writing this book, Jamie was (a) the New York music correspondent for the Times, (b) a frequent contributor to the Art & Leisure section of Sunday New York Times, and (c) living in New York City.

In other words: we have here a book written by "A JOURNALIST both of music and science" (p. xiii) IN NEW YORK CITY.

What kind of philosophical depth and insight do you expect from a book, written by a journalist in New York City???

*

The preface, less than two pages, tells us in its first passage (out of four), in its first sentence (out of four), that the book is about "science and music". In the second sentence we are told, that "this phrase" "has the disadvantage of not being a very accurate description of this book." In the third sentence we are assured, that "it is not entirely misleading", and in the fourth and last sentence we are told that "the book has a much more limited (focus)," and as "I [= the author] hope more reasonable focus," will say, "I have attempted to cover the area of overlap between music and science, beginning at the beginning of Western civilization, ... and arriving at the present day, ..." [As a side note: Jamie manages in the "..." parts of the sentence to come up with four ad hominem catchwords: 'ignoramus', 'philistine', 'dilettante', and 'popularizer'.]

In the second passage, the author observes a "psychotic bifurcation in our civilization," will say, musicians are oblivious of science and scientists of music (poetry, art etc.); we are told that any attempts to improve "this deplorable state of affairs," "has not made the slightest difference."

In the third passage the author tells his readers that "I do not have any hope that the situation will ever change."

Finally, in the forth passage, he points out that "it was not always that way." But he is quick to add that he is "not a believer in the golden age" and that "people's lives in the times I am about to describe were full of all kinds of unpleasantness."

He gloomingly continues:

"Nor do I believe that humankind will ever again be able to return to that kind of intellectual certainty. The key to the universe is no longer of use to anyone,

because

the exquisite edifice it once unlocked has crumbled into nothingness."

"Nonetheless," he hesitantly remarks in the last sentence, "it does seem worth knowing that down through the vastest majority of history, our ancestors believed the world made sense," but why "it seems worth knowing" [to him], he does not tell us. Instead, he is quick to point out that "they were wrong", and concludes the preface, "because they were human even when they were wrong, we can belong there, too."

Really?

*

I sympathize with the Amazon Reviewer [David] who remarked:

"It is incredibly frustrating to try and figure out why the author feels the way he does about almost every subject he brings up, an obstacle made even more difficult given the author's semi bombastic, abstruse sentence structure."

Get inside the mind of Pitagoras and Plato and discover an extraordinary interpretation of music. Then drift away through Reinassence Science till the XX century and find how connected the universe, the music and the human mind are. Music can even start a rebellion, as it happened in Belgica.