“I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of a horse. It is my temper, & I like it the better, to affect all harmony, and sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is a music wherever there is a harmony, order or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres.”

— Thomas Browne , book Religio Medici

Section 9
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

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Thomas Browne 78

English polymath 1605–1682

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“I integrate music from all over the world in my sets, harmony is what my music and life are built upon.”

Tiësto (1969) Dutch DJ and record producer

Tiësto.
Source: [WE8 Coca-Cola Campaign, http://www.coca-cola.com/template1/index.jsp?locale=en_US&site=../we8/we8.jsp, Coca Cola, 2008-08-02]

“And since the proportions of the human voice and the gesticulations of the human body are regulated by the same modulation as that by which sound and the motion of other bodies are, musical thought is subalternated not only to the harmony of human voice and gesticulation, but also of instruments and of those whose delectation consist in motion or sound and with these the harmony of the celestial and non-celestial. And since the concordance of times and the composition and harmony of the lower world and of all things composed of four elements come from celestial motions, and, moreover, since it is necessary to find the harmony of causes in their effects, the study of music also extends to knowing the proportions of times and the constitution of the elements of the lower world, and even the composition of all the elements.”

Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) English bishop and philosopher

As quoted by Tanner, Bower, McLeish, and Gaspar in Ch. 1. "Unity and Symmetry in the De Luce of Robert Grosseteste," Robert Grosseteste and the pursuit of Religious and Scientific Learning in the Middle Ages (2016) ed., Jack P. Cunningham, Mark Hocknull, p. 17.
De artibus liberalibus (c. 1222-1237)

“The bases of music are rhythm and harmony. Rhythm is ordered recurrence in time… As the planets move around the sun, they repeat their orbits periodically; thus there is already a primitive kind of rhythm in their motion…. Harmony… can be considered a special kind of rhythm…. pure musical tones are produced when the vibrations are… periodic or… repeat themselves regularly in time. Two tones harmonize if their intervals of repetition are in rhythm—or, in mathematical language, if their periods are in proportion. Kepler… in the third book of Harmonice mundi… attempted to make other… related, connections between musical harmony and mathematical proportion.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

“Music is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.”

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) German late baroque era composer

“The harmony of music exists equally with the harmony of movement in nature.
Man has not invented the harmony of music. It is one of the underlying principles of life.”

Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American dancer and choreographer

Source: The Art of the Dance (1928), p. 78.
Context: The harmony of music exists equally with the harmony of movement in nature.
Man has not invented the harmony of music. It is one of the underlying principles of life. Neither could the harmony of movement be invented: it is essential to draw one’s conception of it from Nature herself, and to see the rhythm of human movement from the rhythm of water in motion, from the blowing of the winds on the world, in all the earth’s movements, in the motions of animals, fish, birds, reptiles, and even in primitive man, whose body still moved in harmony with nature….. All the movements of the earth follow the lines of wave motion. Both sound and light travel in waves. The motion of water, winds, trees and plants progresses in waves. The flight of a bird and the movements of all animals follow lines like undulating waves. If then one seeks a point of physical beginning for the movement of the human body, there is a clue in the undulating motion of the wave.

“And without music there can be no perfect knowledge, for there is nothing without it. For even the universe itself is said to have been put together with a certain harmony of sounds, and the very heavens revolve under the guidance of harmony.”
Itaque sine Musica nulla disciplina potest esse perfecta, nihil enim sine illa. Nam et ipse mundus quadam harmonia sonorum fertur esse conpositus, et coelum ipsud sub harmoniae modulatione revolvi.

Isidore of Seville book Etymologiae

Bk. 3, ch. 17, sect. 1; p. 137.
Etymologiae

“The bases of music are rhythm and harmony. Rhythm is ordered recurrence in time… As the planets move around the sun, they repeat their orbits periodically; thus there is already a primitive kind of rhythm in their motion. …Harmony …can be considered a special kind of rhythm. …pure musical tones are produced when the vibrations are… periodic or… repeat themselves regularly in time. Two tones harmonize if their intervals of repetition are in rhythm—or, in mathematical language, if their periods are in proportion.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Kepler... in the third book of Harmonice mundi... attempted to make other... related, connections between musical harmony and mathematical proportion.
Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

“I believe that the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the use of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard. Photoelectric, film and mechanical mediums for the synthetic production of music will be explored.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Quote of John Cage, in: 'The Future of Music: Credo' (1937); SILENCE 3-4
1930s

“The most sensitive musical instrument is the human soul. The next is the human voice. One must purify the soul until it begins to sound. A composer is a musical instrument and at the same time, a performer on that instrument. The instrument has to be in order to produce sound. One must start with that, not with the music. Through the music the composer can check whether his instrument is tuned and to what key it is tuned.”

Arvo Pärt (1935) Estonian composer

Read from his musical diaries while speaking at St. Vladimir’s Seminary https://vimeo.com/221011528/

“Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

In his letter to Theo, from The Hague, 21 July 1882, http://www.vggallery.com/letters/245_V-T_218.pdf
1880s, 1882
Context: What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.
That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion.
Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.

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Thomas Browne 78

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