St. Isadore of Seville rained as Archbishop of Seville for over 3 decades. A

scholarly man, St. Isadore was one of the leading historians of the 6th century. He was

versed in both Hebrew and Latin and was familiar with the theories of Claudius Ptolemy

and Pythagoras. Ptolemy believed that musical intervals and pitches had an underlying

mathematical structure that resulted with a series of ratios being applied to intervals. It

was also believed that these same mathematical laws governed the planets and heavenly

bodies. Another writing that St. Isadore was probably very familiar with was Plato’s

“Timaeus”, which talked about the harmony of the cosmos. In any case, it could be

deduced that St. Isadore understood that there are fundamental laws that coincide both

with the musical systems and the planetary systems in the universe.

Isadore once said, “Without music, there can be no perfect knowledge, for there is

nothing without it. For even the universe is said to have been put together with a certain

harmony of sounds, and the very heavens revolve under the guidance of harmony.” It is

the teachings of Plato, Pythagoras and Ptolemy that have brought St. Isadore to make this

statement about the world. He is saying that the same laws that explain planetary

movement and geometry are closely tied with intervallic ratios in music.

About one thousand years later another important scholar, Johannes Kepler, made

a similar comment about the planets and music. He asked, “Which planet sings soprano,

which alto, which tenor and which bass?” Kepler knew what he was talking about when

it came to our solar system. He made discoveries about planetary orbits and distances

that are stilled used today. It is interesting that this huge figure in astronomy would make

the connection between music and the planets. It could have been because of coinciding

ratios he had discovered between certain planets and certain intervals or he could have

been hinting at the possibility of each planet having its own frequency that it emits. In

any case, Kepler was also commenting on the generally accepted connection between

music, mathematics, and astronomy. Intervals in music such and major seconds and

perfect fifths and octaves all have a ratio when compared to one another. These ratios

can be seen in many different regions of our universe. The most astounding part of it is

that this sort of thinking was even commonplace in the 6th century before such

astronomical discoveries such as Kepler’s had been made.