This book provides the parallel histories of music and science, from celestial harmony to cosmic dissonance. For centuries, scientists and philosophers believed the universe was a stately, ordered mechanism -- mathematical and musical. The smooth…
"Professor of Music at Colgate University and a widely respected musicologist, Godwin here traces the idea, held since ancient times, that the whole cosmos is in some way a musical or harmonious entity."--Publisher's description.
Magic enjoyed a vigorous revival in sixteenth-century Europe, attaining a prestige it had not held for over a millenium and becoming, for some, a kind of universal philosophy. Renaissance music also suggested a form of universal knowledge through…