SATURN AND MELANCHOLY

Melanie Reinhart
Exploring the depiction of Saturn and melancholy in art or music,
demonstrating how the artist/composer conveys specific symbolic
meanings.

________________________________________________________________________

We pray that we may come unto this Darkness which is beyond light,
and, without seeing and without knowing, to see and to know that which
is above vision and knowledge through the realization that by not-seeing
and by unknowing we attain to true vision and knowledge. (Dionysius the
Areopagite, n.d.: 205)

Presenting metaphysical, theological and astrological themes en route, selected

music and poetry will be explored as illustrating and evoking melancholia
generosa1 – a state beyond finite knowledge and discursive or binary reasoning,
but opening into contemplative inspiration. Our journey with melancholy is
rooted in Hippocrates (5th/4th century BCE), developed by Plato and the
Neoplatonists, then glorified by Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) in the Renaissance
period. Reaching the Age of Enlightenment, we pause to hear the oratorio
L’Allegro, Il Penseroso ed Il Moderato, composed by George Frederick Handel
(1685–1759).2 Mythological and alchemical imagery relating to Saturn and
melancholy abound throughout this composition, in both music and libretto.
Highlights will be examined reflexively and hermeneutically, and also through
amplification of symbols presented therein (Jung, 1980: 28, 289).

Origins

Hippocrates understood melancholy as arising from the “humours” (Voss, 2007:

150), related to the four elements – choleric (fire), sanguine (air), phlegmatic
(water) and melancholic (earth). These “controlled the whole existence and
behaviour of mankind” (Klibansky et al., 1964: 3); disease resulted from lack of
balance between the humours, which otherwise supported health (Wittkower, R.
and M.: 102). In Timaeus, Plato writes:

1 Klibansky et al., 1964: Pt. III, 217ff.

2 Spelling from Handel’s funerary monument. For variations, see fn1,2 in Wikipedia
(2015).
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For where … bitter and bilious humours wander about in the body, and
find no exit or escape, but … mingle their own vapours with the motions
of the soul … they produce all sorts of diseases … [and] infinite varieties
of ill-temper and melancholy … (Plato, 2011: 42587).
Humours may be, variously, “hot, cold, dry, moist, dark, confused, settled,
constringed, as it participates of matter, or is without matter, the symptoms are
likewise mixed. One is heavy as lead, another is as light as a feather” (Burton
2012: I, 9738). Black bile is cold, heavy and dry and generates melancholy –
depression, apathy, sorrow, delusion and mental illness. If over-heated, the
opposite can result – manic, overactive exuberance, tending to frenzy and
superhuman feats, including intense bursts of creative energy. When
“moderately heated”, however, black bile may produce a superior kind of gnosis
(Voss, 2007: 151). Following Aristotle, Cornelius Agrippa describes “white
melancholy … which, when kindled and burning, stirs up frenzy and brings to
us knowledge” (Agrippa, 2012: 2709).

Agrippa describes four as “the number of the Sun” (Agrippa, n.d.: 2763), while
Plato’s earlier Laws Bk. X speaks of the soul’s relationship with the Sun as an
invisible central presence (Plato, 2011: 48355-79), and this theme reaches
consummation in Ficino’s De Sole (Costello et al., 1994). From this line of
thought, the ‘innerness’ of all the planets may be inferred: “The soul of the
human being [is] made from the same stuff as the world” (Voss, forthcoming: 3).
By the 9th century, correlations between planets, temperaments, humours and
the four elements were “regarded as proven theory” amongst the Arabic
astrologers (Klibansky et al., 1964: 128).

A lamination of Saturnian themes

A Janus-like3 ambiguity surrounds the planet Saturn, as its iconography

includes images both dark and light. The ancient Roman Saturn was a
benevolent god of agriculture (Klibansky et al.,1979: 134); this benign pastorality
became fused with the Greek Kronos, whose violent genealogy and succession
(Chevalier et al., 1996: 728) were vigorously denounced by Plato in The Republic,
Bk. II (Plato, 2011: 23295). Much later, “Saturn came to be homologized to
Satan, to deus otiosus and absconditus …” (Feld, 2011: 1441), echoing his early
banishment to Tartarus, under the earth: “And in the bitterness of his anger
Zeus cast him into wide Tartarus” (Hesiod, 2009: 614).

3 Ancient Indo-European deity with double profile, presiding over ‘beginnings’; his month
(January) includes both zodiac signs under Saturn’s rulership (Chevalier et al., 1996:
552).
 3

Ficino’s redeeming of Saturn’s reputation for maleficity prepared the ground for
interpretations less “fated” and more psychological (Voss, forthcoming: 6). This
tropological “turn” (Cornelius, 2003: 283) was precipitated by his young friend,
Cavalcanti: “How could he, as a good Christian Platonist, attribute an evil
influence to the stars – he who had every cause to venerate ‘that highest star’ as
a good planet?” (Ficino et al., 1998: 257, Bullard, 1990: 694-98).

In medieval cosmology, the

central Earth with the four
elements was surrounded
by the planetary spheres, in
order of their distance from
the Earth.

Saturn is the highest, the

furthest away and therefore
seemingly the slowest. It is
the ‘gateway’ to the next
sphere, the fixed stars and
zodiac constellations.

The latter represent an

archive of human
experience, in imaginal and
mythic forms, clustered
around the ecliptic.

Fig. I - Medieval Cosmology and Worldview (Borde, 1542)

Beginnings – chora and the via negativa

“Before the heavens there existed fire, air, water, earth …” writes Plato in
Timaeus (Plato, 2011: 40154); Jowett points out that “besides the material out of
which the elements are made, there is also a space [chora] in which they are
contained” (Plato, 2011: 40787 my italics): the “containing vessel or nurse of
generation” (Plato, 2011: 40783). Introducing Parmenides, he writes:
… the great Eleatic philosopher … sings of ‘Being unbegotten and
imperishable, unmoved and never-ending, which never was nor will be,
but always is, one and continuous, which cannot spring from any other;
for it cannot be said or imagined not to be.’ The idea of eternity was for a
great part a negation (Plato, 2011: 40773, my italics).
The via negativa, a spiritual exegesis of ‘negation’, is discernible in mystical
Christianity in particular (Spearing, 2001: 254) as a theology which is apophatic
rather than cataphatic: God is described in terms of what He is not, rather than
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worshipped for, or recognised by, attributes that can be described or depicted

(Feld, 2011: 2726).

Could it be that the experience of melancholy may lead by way of the via
negativa to a felt sense of this “containing vessel” as the divine unknowable
itself? Shaw describes chora as “the matrix of creation” (Shaw, 2012: 106); Feld
suggests that “the self knows its light only by knowing its darkness” (2011: 36)
and, further, that “melancholy and chora are indelibly united … [in] the
experience of the otherness of God” (2011: 497, my italics).4 This interplay of
opposites is a core theme in the alchemical tradition (Jung, 1980: 329ff, n41).

Alchemy and the transformation of melancholy

“In general, diseases are cured by their contraries” (Hippocrates 1849: II.22).
To regulate an excess of melancholic humour, healing procedures were advised
that related to benefic Jupiter, warm and moist: fresh air, movement, travel,
moderation, genial company, and study to elevate the mind.5 “Ficino’s
therapaeia is an exercise in imagination, an abandonment of Saturnine
habitudes, and [the] cultivation of salvific Jovial and Solar ones” (Feld, 2011:
1528). However, just as Saturn was dry and cold, so also was Mercury,6 which
thus offered a cure by “similar things”.7

In the alchemical tradition, Saturn was consubstantial with sulphur, the prima
materia or ‘base matter’ with which Mercury interacted (Voss, 2007: 158) during
the magical opus by which the alchemist aspired to attain the lapis
philosophorum (Jung, 1980: 178, 232) or the “spiritual” gold (Jung 1980: 383),
symbolically related to the Sun (Kollerstrom, 2011). The first stage of the opus is
the nigredo or ‘blackening’ and perhaps “That is why … at the first sight of
melancholy, the adept rejoices” (Feld, 2011: 1579).

4 See Sallis (1999), p.99, and notes on Vesta, herein, p.9.

5 See Burton (2012): II for extensive remedials.
6See Ficino et al., (1998), p.413, n1.4,1. Older traditions classify Mercury as neutral,
but amplifying the qualities of whatever it combines with (see Fig. I).
7 Referring to the doctrine of correspondences, Paracelsus (1493–1541) is reputed to
have said, “What makes a man ill also cures him” (Hargraves, 2015). Agrippa writes, “…
all similar things are applied to their like, [and] are accomplished by similar natures…”
(Agrippa, 2012: 2627).
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Handel’s L’Allegro, Il Penseroso ed Il Moderato (APM henceforth)

This oratorio offers an auditory experience of a melancholic state being refined

and moderated into a “unique and divine gift” (Klibansky et al., 1964: 259).
Echoing Voss, writing of Dowland’s music, we can say of APM that, “the depth
and power of its musical symbolism point to more profound dimensions of
reality than even the composer himself may have envisioned” (Voss, 2007: 150).

On January 19th 1740,

Handel began composing
APM, scored for choir,
orchestra, organ and vocal
soloists. Just twenty-one
days later, it was
completed. This astonishing
frenzy of creative genius
and intensely focussed
productivity brings to mind
the condition of
“overheated” black bile
(Voss, 2007: 151).8

Fig. II – Händel (Hudson, 1741)

[E]very soul could be conquered by music, and … by remembering and

being aware of the music of Heaven it might bear every hard and
wearisome pain (Godwin, 1993: 4335).9

8Poignantly, Handel may have died of Saturnine gout or plumbism – lead poisoning
Hunter, 2008: 82-87, fn61). Lead is the metal of Saturn; a speculative exploration of
Handel’s horoscope [ref. Astrodatabank (2015), q.v.] reveals Saturn ruling his Ascendant
and placed in the 8th house, of which it is also general co-significator – the ‘house of
death’, the epicataphora or ‘casting down’ (Houlding, 1998: 76-77).

9Source: Zarlino, G. Institutioni Harmoniche (Venice, 1558), Pt. I, Ch. 6. Transl. Godwin,
J. (from the 1573 edition). Reprint Gregg Press (1966), pp. 16–21.
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Libretto, style and structure

Handel composed APM in the style of a pastoral ode, with libretto based on two
companion poems, L’Allegro and Il Penseroso,10 written in approximately 1631 by
John Milton (1608–1674), and influenced
by The Anatomy of Melancholy, the magnum
opus of Robert Burton (1577–1640),
published ten years earlier (Grace, 1955:
578ff).11

Dr. Ben Johnson noted the similarity

between L’Allegro and Il Penseroso and an
early work (c.1600) of Burton: The Author’s
Abstract of Melancholy. Johnson thought
this poem was “sufficient to prove, to a
discerning reader, how far it had taken
possession of Milton’s mind …” (Burton,
2012: I,135; I,150).12 Fig. III – Robert Burton (Anon., 1893)

Handel’s librettist, Charles Jensen, wove passages from Milton’s poems into a
stylised dialogue between the personifications of Joy (L’Allegro) and Melancholy
(Il Penseroso).13 Milton has been called “our English Homer” (Marks, 2011: 863)
and Dame Frances Yates referred to Il Penseroso as “the supreme poetic
expression of the theory of inspired melancholy” (Yates, 1981). With his fine
classical education (Jokinen, 2006), Milton was almost certainly familiar with
Neoplatonic philosophy (Geckle, 1968: 466).

A rich interplay of alchemical opposites which eventually resolve into unity

provides the main structure of APM. Alternations, contrasts, blends and
interchanges are portrayed through literary and musical devices such as textual
juxtapositions and dramatic switches from major to minor keys. Lewalski
comments on L’Allegro and Il Penseroso:

10 See Milton, J. & Malone, E. (1995) for full text, linked.

11There is disagreement about the date of first publication of Anatomy of Melancholy.
See Burton, 2015: I,119, and fn5.
12For comments on Saturn in Burton’s horoscope see Bamborough & Eade (1981),
p.272ff.
13 See Handel, G. (1999) for libretto, linked.
 7

Structurally, both follow the mode of the classic hymn: first an exorcism
or banishment of the opposing deity, then an invocation of the deity
celebrated (Mirth, Melancholy); then a celebration of her qualities; and
finally, a prayer to be admitted into her company (Lewalski, 2000: 39).
Viswanathan notes an Orphicism inherent in their emphasis on contemplation,
austerity, isolation and the mysteries of nature (Viswanathan, 1975: 457), while
Fixler places the poems in the genre of incantation, “here directed to clarifying
certain antithetical temperamental spirits or humors” (Fixler, 1971: 165).
Referring to Cornelius Agrippa, “the adept bent on invocation should know, as
Il Penseroso knows, that the universe is alive with intelligential beings” (Fixler,
1971: 165), he points out that Agrippa’s statements derive from Pico della
Mirandola’s Conclusiones (Fixler, 1971: fn1,2), also citing the influence of
Proclus and Ficino, whose experiments with the Orphic hymns engendered a
therapeutic theurgy:
the power of the hymns … flowed in the great system of correspondences
that bound together macrocosm and microcosm, so that the Orphic power
could be directed to the infusion of spirit … and that the soul itself could
more properly be restored to its divine nature (Fixler 1971: 167).

Entering the work

The opening aria, scored for bass voice, is replete with mythic allusions as
L’Allegro vividly conveys the hell of melancholy in which he dwells. With Ficino,
“we attribute to Saturn voices that are slow, deep, harsh and plaintive …” (Ficino
et al., 1998: 361):14
Hence loathéd Melancholy
Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born,
In Stygian caves forlorn
‘Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks and sights unholy …
In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
Starting with a C major key signature, the melody twists and turns through
many accidentals and chromatics, like one trying to wriggle out of chains or
seeming to wander in tormented exile. The aria ends with a doubled octave on
the tonic note of C preceded by a passage with E flat accidentals, implying the
minor key. The “sound of the sun” (Godwin, 1995: 2340) reassures the listener
that although “we may suffer, yet ‘all manner of things shall be well’ ” (Julian,
2015: 78). Ficino held that, “all music proceeds from Apollo…” (Ficino et al.,
1998: 361) and as APM unfolds we hear references, both textual and musical, to
the Sun. With airy flute-sounds, Mercury presides over the interweaving
opposites, accompanied by benefic Jupiter and gracious Venus:

14 Ficino Three Books on Life, III.XXI.

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The music … of Jupiter is deep, earnest, sweet and joyful with stability…
To Venus, on the contrary, we ascribe songs voluptuous with wantonness
and softness. … The songs between these two extremes we ascribe to the
Sun and Mercury: if with their grace and smoothness they are reverential,
simple and earnest, the songs are judged to be Apollo’s; if they are
somewhat more relaxed … along with their gaiety, but vigorous and
complex, they are Mercury’s (Ficino et al., 1998: 361).
The opening words “Hence, loathéd Melancholy” are echoed in a riposte from Il
Penseroso, a soprano, singing “Hence, vain deluding joys …”. Here, the opposites
are antagonised and the prima materia is revealed: Handel’s sublime music
invites the listener into the transformational work. Next, L’Allegro invokes
Venus, mother of the three Graces, and Il Penseroso invokes Vesta:

Come, thou goddess fair and free

In Heav’n yclep’d Euphrosyne
Whom lovely Venus, at a birth,
With two sister-graces more,
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore.

Fig. IV – Primavera [detail], Botticelli (1482)

Come, rather, goddess, sage and holy

Hail, divinest Melancholy,
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight;
Thee bright-haired Vesta long of yore
To solitary Saturn bore.

Fig. V – Vesta [detail], Phelan (2008)

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Milton’s genealogy describes Melancholy as the child of Saturn and Vesta,

although in the Homeric hymns, Vesta is Saturn’s daughter by Rhea (Crudden,
2001: 3446).15 However, in Orphic Hymn No.27 to “The Mother of the World”
Hestia/Vesta is addressed as “…. consort of Kronos, honored child of Sky, frenzy-
loving nurturer of life”, and asked to “joyously and graciously visit our deeds of
piety” (Athanassakis & Wolkow, 2013: 1541, my italics). Under the contained
solemnity of this goddess we find a joyful surge of life-force and generosity – the
opposite is revealed.

The first chorus, “Haste thee nymph …”, includes a delightful onomatopoeic
phrase of staccato notes, allegro, to accompany “laughter, holding both his
sides”. However, even in this hilarity, we are reminded of melancholy through
downward-falling musical motifs, off-set by being uplifted through different
registers:

Fig. VI – APM (Burrows, 2014: 17)

15 See Revard (1986) pp. 339-344 for further discussion of the genealogy in Milton’s
L’Allegro and Il Penseroso.
 10

Il Penseroso counters this jubilance with a stately aria of ethereal quality, in

whose text, “polysyllables, clusters of consonants, and a liberal use of spondaic
feet produce a deliberate and sombre tone” (Lewalski, 2000: 39):
Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast and demure.
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestic train.
Il Penseroso continues in a tender exaltation of solitary ecstasy:
There held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble still
With a sad, leaden, downward cast,
Thou fix them on the earth as fast …
And hear the Muses in a ring
Round about Jove’s altar sing.
Progressing from Saturnine imagery (“sad, leaden, downward”), the melody rises
to the highest note in the entire oratorio, reaching upwards in passionate
longing and ringing out the name of Jove (Jupiter):

Fig. VII – APM (Burrows, 2014: 17)

A solemn chorus follows, a prayer for those who “with gods diet” (Handel, 1980:
00:19:30). It is not difficult to imagine Milton, who wrote this prayer, and
Handel, who set it to music, each uttering it with complete sincerity, perhaps
echoing Ficino, who recognised the trials of those who work with scholarly or
artistic inspiration, thus becoming prone to melancholy (Ficino et al., 1998: 92).

The sombre mood is gently interrupted by L’Allegro repeating “Hence, loathéd

Melancholy …”, now sung by a brighter, lighter, tenor voice. A boy treble takes
over with the plea “Mirth admit me of thy crew”, his Mercurial, bird-like timbre
expressing youthful innocence. In response, Il Penseroso prays for “mute
Silence” and for the “cherub Contemplation” to come “on golden wing”
(00:25:05), heralding the sublime nightingale song, a soprano piece in coloratura
style with high tessitura and flute obbligato.
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The nightingale (Philomel) was said to bestow watchfulness (Agrippa, 2012: 895)
and to correspond with planetary influences beneficial for melancholy: Mercury,
“naturally clever, melodious, musical, and versatile” (Agrippa, 2012: 1446), Sun
and Venus (Warnock, 2012: 816, 918). A joyful flute solo introduces the
Mercurial “chauntress” to whom is sung an ecstatic aria in response:
Sweet bird that shun’st the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy!
Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among,
I woo to hear thy even-song.

Fig. VIII – APM (Burrows, 2014: 43)

The key changes abruptly from major to minor, from praising the “sweet bird” to
lamenting the absent “chauntress”:
Or missing thee, I walk unseen
On the dry smooth shaven green,
To behold the wand’ring moon,
Riding near her highest noon.
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Il Penseroso’s aria “Oft on a plat of rising ground …” begins with minimal

accompaniment, largo et piano. Plucked bass notes and a soaring melody call to
the isolation of melancholy and the longing for the inner light, symbolised as
“glowing embers in a room”, perhaps alluding to Vesta as goddess of the hearth
(Athanassakis & Wolkow, 2013: 3479 and n2, 8117).16

Fig. IX – APM ( Burrows, 2014: 48)

The aria “Let me wander not unseen …” is a stately waltz, plaintive in tone and
full of charming pastoral detail, evoking the ancient, benign, Roman Saturn. But
when “the mower whets his scythe …” Saturn as Kronos, the “pitiless equalizer”
(Chevalier et al., 1996: 836), appears amidst this gentle, bucolic scene. L’Allegro,
confronted with mortality, is led not into sorrow, but renewal: “Straight mine eye
hath caught new pleasures …”. The treble returns to sing “Or let the merry bells
ring round”, and this joyful motif extends into the concluding chorus of Part I,
with “young and old … out to play, on a sunshine holiday” (00:52:52).

Then, quite suddenly, we hear “the livelong daylight fail”.17 A long-drawn-out

chord precedes another shift from major to minor key and a melancholy,
downward-tending line ends on a wistful chord of tonic and dominant notes
only, a simple pentatonic contrast to the melodic and rhythmic exuberance of
the previous lines:
Thus past the day, to bed they creep (00:53:25)
By Whisp’ring winds soon lull’d asleep.

16 Osgood personifies Vesta as “domestic retirement” (1964: lvii).

17 Perhaps a poignant foreshadowing of Handel’s sudden blindness (Hunter, 2008: 23).
 13

The spirits of Hermes and Plato

Part II opens with a striking passage where, perhaps in nostalgia for a bygone
age, or in a dream after being “lull’d asleep”, Il Penseroso invokes “thrice-great
Hermes” and the “spirit of Plato”:

Oh, let my lamp, at midnight hour

Be seen in some high lonely tow’r …
With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato to unfold
What worlds, or what vast regions hold …

Fig. X - Symbolicum Questionum … (Bocchii, 1555) Fig. XI - The School of Athens [detail]
(Raphael, 1509)

Then “gorgeous Tragedy” is invited to “come sweeping by” and a tentative, even
timid, recitative follows:
Thus night oft see me in thy pale career
Till unwelcome morn appear.

A robust, declamatory chorus, “Populous cities …”, intercepts the melancholy

musings of Il Penseroso, shifting suddenly to a minor key and slowing to a
graceful andante. As if to protest that morn should be “unwelcome”, L’Allegro
invokes spring and the colour of the Sun: “There let Hymen oft appear, In saffron
 14

robe with taper clear” (01:04:57).18 Il Penseroso sings with mounting firmness
and intensity of purpose:
Me, when the sun begins to fling (01:07:34)
His glaring beams …
Hide me from day’s garish eye … (01:08:06)
But let my due feet never fail (01:22:29)
To walk the studious cloisters pale …
Casting a dim religious light …
A loud, anthemic chorus, grave, is followed by an organ solo, ad libitum, then a
solitary prayer with scant accompaniment. The melody sounds as if suspended,
breathless, in the ether:
And let their sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all Heav’n before mine eyes!
After another organ solo,19 Il Penseroso brings Part II to an intense, but serene,
climax of surrender to “old experience”:
May at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of ev’ry star that Heaven doth shew,
And ev’ry herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
According to Daniel Chua, “Modernity … [having] collapsed the music of the
spheres into the rhetorical will of the human ego (Chua, 2001: 18) … laments its
loss of meaning by idealising the magic of the ancient world” (Chua, 2001: 19-
20). However, perhaps in the very “idealising” is embedded the melancholy call to
that mystery which is felt to have been lost and is mourned, but to which the
melancholic remains faithful:
These pleasures, Melancholy, give
And I with thee will choose to live.

Il Moderato and Saturn’s exaltation

The libretto for Part III, Il Moderato, was specially written by Jennens at Handel’s
request (Burrows, 2014: xi).20 This final section culminates with a vocal duet for
soprano and tenor, featuring a short, symmetrical motif which is echoed by

18In astrology, the Sun is said to be exalted in Aries, the zodiac sign associated with
spring, or ‘Hymen’; yellow and gold are its associated colours. Here, ‘robe’ and ‘taper’
conjure a priestly figure.
19 Solo Organ Fugue Segue No. 35; 1741, No. 34.
20See Burrows (2014) for details of revisions of APM. Part III was later removed and
eventually reinstated.
 15

plaintive woodwind. “The mind’s dualism sings as one” (Gardiner, 1980: 16), the
alchemical opus comes to rest in a final unison, “as steals the morn upon the
night, And melts the shades away”.21

Il Moderato can be seen as a musical depiction of Saturn’s exaltation in the sign

of Libra, the Scales.22 Venus, its ruling planet (White, 2009), signifies beauty,
mutuality, moderation, balance, equipoise, equanimity, justice and harmony
(Chevalier et al., 996: 829-32). Melancholia generosa is evoked and honoured
with a final, prayerful chorus – a balanced, sombre, hymn in grand but spacious
polyphonic style. The mind is stilled and the soul refreshed by the sheer physical
force of the sound and the uplifting beauty of the harmonies:
Thy pleasures, Moderation, give
In them alone we truly live.

Fig. XII – Morgen (Runge, 1808)

21 See Appendix I for the musical scoring of these lines.

22Scales feature in Dürer’s etching Melencholia I, left of the magical square of Jupiter:
behind the winged figure are symbols of the celestial energies considered helpful to the
melancholic – Jupiter and Venus. See Appendix II, and Pingree (1980).
 16

APPENDIX I

Fig. XIII – APM (Burrows, 2014: 134-5)

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APPENDIX II

Fig. XIV – Melencholia I (Albrecht Dürer, 1514)

 18

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Athanassakis, A. & Wolkow, B. (2013) The Orphic Hymns. Baltimore, MD: The Johns
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