Sándor Szabó:

Cosmological Aspects of Ancient Music

The music has deep cosmological aspects backing to archaic times. The following
study seeks to find answers to why relationships were formed in ancient music culture
between cosmology and music. Cosmological contexts of ancient arts may seem atmost poetic
for the modern man. The whole knowledge of cosmology and astrology got to the
consciousness of human kind by intuitive channels, which was consolidated to practical
knowledge by thinking and empiric cognition. Since the ancient works of arts were made in a
different form of consciousness, their cosmological aspects cannot be interpretable in our
paradigm. The important cosmic pillars that are important to man in his life are the celestial
bodies that have been well observed since ancient times, the Moon, the Sun, the planets, the
stars, and of course, the Earth from which we look. The basis of the ancient cosmological
view is that one sees the celestial bodies as a cosmic manifestation of existence and life. In
this celestial world, the Sun, as a source of all life, played a particularly important role, and
this privileged status created cult. For man Sun was considered to be as Deity, but also the
whole cosmos to be as a living entity. For man, the cosmos was a sacred being. He sensed the
phenomena of the outside world, tied to the cosmic aspects. It is based on the consciousness
of the spiritual and physical unity of the Universe and its own being.
In the archaic times, man had fully experienced his unity with nature and was in close contact
with the cosmos. The decisive presence of the Sun and its importance to man in the
corresponding periods of the day, expressed in music. In Eastern classical music, this
tradition remains. At certain times of the day, only certain pieces are played.
Over time, not only music but cosmic relationships have become more and more
complex in man's life. In fact, the musical, mood-adjusted adjustment to the times of the day
means harmonious tuning of the emotional life of man to the cosmological aspects of the
world. In the organic system of relationships, the celestial bodies are obviously connected
with the whole being of man, with all the moments of earthly life, as the voice world is related
to the human soul, there is also a connection between the cosmos and the sound world.
The sound world is a projection of physical reality that directly affects the human soul. This is
why perhaps the music is the most direct passage between man's inner spiritual world and the
outside world, connecting the inner cosmos with the outer cosmos.

Cosmological symbolism in music

In music, the expression of emotional and mood content is expressed in proportions

of distances of musical sounds. The ratio of the number of vibrations of musical sounds can
be expressed mathematically. The relationships between musical sounds are dominated by
natural laws. Sounds become music by multi-level ordering of sounds. In most cases, the
organizing principle is based on distinctions and the creation of an internal hierarchy of
sounds. The distinction must be named, which is done intuitively by a man living in a cult,
such as calling one voice to Moon and the other as a Sun, and thus an assignment is made.
This creates an order that is created by an instinctive impulse. In this conceptual example, the
symbolic assignment to the two heavenly bodies creates two moody emotional nodes in the
melody. In this case, the musical assignment is made to the sound at a distance for the basic
tone, that is, it actually assigns a proportion to a celestial body. The tone of the melody-
forming sequence symbolizes the viewer's starting point, the earthly existence, so it can be
called Earth-note, another called Moon-note, and another one for the Sun-note.
For example, in a possible assignment, C is Earth-note, F is Moon-note, and G is Sun-note.
Thus, this assignment creates the spiritual symbolic connection between the sounds and the
celestial bodies, between the inner world of man and the cosmos. The symbolic assignment is
made by the ritual of playing music to an attempt to communicate with the cosmos.
In this communication, not exact mental contents are transferred, but rather expressing and
emphasizing the presence in the Universe, belonging to the Unity. Earth-note's, Moon-note's,
and Sun-note's musical relationship is the analogical symbolic equivalent of the spiritual
cosmic relationship of the celestial bodies. The guiding principle of melody creation is that
the assigned sounds are reinforced by playing the adjacent lower and upper tones, moving
away and returning, confirming its current tonal position. In such a melody, not only a
directing principle prevails in the direction of the flow of music, but also the ritual act of
music. The symbolism of musical performance may extend to further and more detailed
cosmological relationships, for example, to the Moon phases and part of the days on Earth and
even seasons.

Relation between the parts of the day and music

In the rich set of musical scales in Eastern music, we can see assignments between
the different parts of the day and the scale-notes that make up the music. There are musical
notes in this distinction that may not occur, for example, in pieces played at night. In Indian
classical music, it is a common occurrence that the fifths (G) is not present in a raga scale,
because the presence of G note always represents the presence of the Sun, and with omitting
the G the absence of Sun is expressed. The C-G interval always symbolizes the light, the Sun.
In some evening ragas like Rata Puriya, Marwa, the G sound is not present. There is no G
note in Sohini, in one of the most typical midnight raga piece. Also in Maqam music culture
the harmonization of pieces of music for the time of day can be seen. The musical notes of
some maqam scales match the notes of certain Indian ragas which are played in the same part
of day. This is not a coincidence but a relationship that can be attributed to the interaction of
the two cultures.
Symbols of planets and musical notes

In ancient cultures, the notes of the basic music scale were assigned to the planets of the solar
system. Planets have visually communicable and interpretable symbols since ancient times.
They appear in different designs per culture, but this is not as important as the fact of voice
assignment itself. One of the oldest known attributes is from ancient Egypt:

C D E F G A B

Jupiter Mars Sun Venus Mercury Moon Saturn

Another cosmological assignment below is from Pythagoras:

C D E F G A B

Jupiter Saturn Moon Mercury Venus Sun Mars

 Earth does not appear in the above assignments, as it is present as a constant viewpoint
in this approach. Assignments to the 5 voices of the pentatonic soundtrack are also known, so
there are only 5 celestial bodies in them. There are many similar to the above, and if we knew
all of them, we would probably draw the conclusion that there was no unified assignment in
the music of different cultures, but it changed in different periods and cultures. Of course, the
cosmological connections of the voices are not exhausted with the connections of the
planetary system. The mood and emotional contents of the musical note intervals are also
related to the zodiac domain of the star systems. Thus, the spiritual microcosm of man is
connected to the macrocosm of the outside world in the musical composition, in the musical
ritual, and is in harmony with each other.

A possible assignment of all 12 notes in the chromatic sequence is as follows:

C C# D D# E F

Aries Taurus Gemini Cancer Leo Virgo

F# G G# A A# B

Libra Scorpio Sagittarius Capricorn Aquarius Pisces

The moment when the inner and outer cosmos of man is in balance are in harmony
with each other when they perceive the reality of creativity, their unity with the Universe, is a
sacred experience. Today's man is trying to see the cosmos and life relationships only through
the horoscope. The horoscope used nowadays carries only the distorted memories of
traditional astrology. The distortion was caused by the appearance of the materialistic
approach and the subsequent change of the world. Thus, traditional astrology was transferred
to superstition and occult knowledge, and lost its seriousness and credibility. The reality of
experience was replaced by knowledge from simple communication. This, in fact, gives a
different picture of reality. It was no longer possible to give a deeper initiation of knowledge,
only faith. That's why you can only believe in the horoscope. In the archaic era, the
relationships between life and the cosmos were an integral part of the life, that is, knowledge
was based on conviction, and experience.

Other observable relationships between musical notes and cosmos

The cosmos and the musical sounds are unequivocally linked by a common
phenomenon, the periodic change that can be clearly demonstrated in the rotation of the
planets, in the periodicity of their circulatory time and vibration frequency of musical sounds.
It appears that the oscillation of the sounds and the circulating time of the planets within the
octave show surprising regularities and proportions. The relationship between them is well
observable and recognizable by comparing cosmological proportions.
The Titius-Bode rule is that the pathways of the planets in the solar system are particularly
striking and obvious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titius%E2%80%93Bode_law

The most striking among the regularities is that the distances to the Sun of the planets
doubled as the frequencies of consecutive musical octaves. Nothing in nature is as accurate as
in the world of abstract mathematics. However, the difference is as insignificantly low as the
organic inaccuracy is in nature. . Starting from the previously stated relationships between
sounds and cosmos, we can make an important statement. The spiritual relationship between
man, music, and cosmos is symbolically translated into the material world. If one intuitively
finds the relationship between his own being and the cosmos, and expresses them
unconsciously in voices, then he creates harmony by expressing himself.
Symbolism is expressed in the concrete feelings evoked by the sounds and in the intuitively
related assignments of the sounds to the celestial bodies. The human soul is connected to the
cosmos through symbols. Symbolic markings of the celestial bodies indicate this. Just as it
forms a concept together with the thought content of a spoken or described word, the visible
symbol represents a content of a thought and feeling that cannot be verbally expressed.

All the spiritual and viable sense content that a planet's existence represents can be
linked to a single symbol and can be grasped by the mind.

Sources:

- Mircea Eliade: The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (Harvest Book)
- Alain Danielou : Northern Indian Music, Calcutta: Visva Bharati, (1949)
- Alain Danielou: The Music and the Power of Sound, Inner Traditions, Vermont (1995)

Keywords: cosmology, symbolism, ancient music, spiritual, symbolic assignement, melody creation

Sándor Szabó independent music researcher