this page honors Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)

In Book V of The Harmony of The World (published in 1619), Kepler undertook the task of divining "the most perfect harmony of the heavenly motions." The quotations are from his book.

Here are seven original musical selections. Click on the controls to listen to each composition in turn. HELP

In Kepler's scheme, Mercury has an eccentric interval, represented here as A2 to C4 in the Aeolian mode.

"Venus remains almost on unison, not amounting ... even to the smallest of the melodic intervals."

"The Earth sings MI FA MI, so that ... in this home of ours MIsery and FAmine hold sway."

"Here the Moon also has a place." (It's also a fourth, from G2 to Middle C, a nice way to begin a fugue!)

"... at perihelion [Mars] attains c, at aphelion it hints at f ..." which "is an interval common to all the modes"

"... if [Jupiter's] motion at aphelion is matched with G, its motion at perihelion reaches b [B-flat] ..."

"... if you set [Saturn's] tonic note as G, its motion at perihelion ascends to h [B natural] ..." [a major third]

Johannes Kepler assigned a musical interval representing the motion of each of the known planets around the sun, and he spelled these intervals out using musical notation. I used them as the starting points for these fugues and cosmic musical mixes.

Copyright 2000-2005 by Fleur Helsingor. All rights reserved.
Contact: send email to "fleur" at <well.com>.