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| The quater-centenary of the birth of the Jesuit polymath, Father Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), seemed an appropriate moment to examine one of the most famous volumes of his works in Special Collections - the Musurgia Universalis published in two volumes in Rome in 1650. Our copy is outstanding for its finely hand coloured illustrations. |
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The book is one
of the seminal works of musicology and was hugely influential in the
development of Western music - in particular on J.S.Bach (1685-1750)
and Beethoven (1770-1827).
Its author lived and worked at the Collegio Romano in Rome for most of his life and his position at the hub of a huge international organisation - the 40,000 or so strong Society of Jesus - had two very important effects: first of all he received thousands of letters from Jesuits and others in places as far apart and little-known as China and Mexico, giving him access to unparalleled sources of knowledge mostly unknown to the western world. The second effect was the converse of this: Kircher's books were printed in large numbers - there were 1500 copies printed in 1650 of the Musurgia Universalis alone - and widely distributed through Jesuit channels. In 1652, for example, more than 300 Jesuits came to Rome from all over the world to elect a new Superior General: every one of them took back one of these sumptuous volumes, which explains the astonishing diaspora of these books even today. |
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The rest of the content of the book, however, is much less well-known, although a small number of
the same restricted group of bitonal images from it regularly appears on
websites. The German publishing house of Olm produced a facsimile
edition of it in 1990 but it is already out of print.
Perhaps most strangely of all, apart from a nineteenth century translation of the work into German, there are no translations of the book, which is written in rather ponderous Latin with occasional excursions into Greek and Hebrew. Some of the musical scores printed in the book are found in no other form, despite the fame of some of the composers. |
| The frontispiece to the first volume was engraved by Baronius of Rome after a drawing by John Paul Schor. It makes reference to similar pages in some of Kircher's other volumes, particularly the triangle and globe symbols. The colouring of this page by an unknown artist, (perhaps a previous owner) is one of the more successful attempts at the art in the two volumes of the work held by the University of Glasgow. | |
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The triangle at the top is the symbol of the Holy Trinity and sheds its rays over the whole of the top of the picture. Kircher held to the medieval idea that music is a reflection of the essential mathematics and proportions inherent in all Creation so the Trinity was not only a symbol but a real dogma. Under the Trinity we find the nine angelic, four-voice choirs, singing a 36-part canon by Romano Micheli. The canon is properly described as "canoni sopra le vocali di piu parole" ("on the vowels of a few words") although in the present case the words ascribed are those of the angelic choirs in the Trishagion - "Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus", as described in Revelation. The strip of text reads: "Angelic choir of 36 voices" (then the Sanctus music notated in staff notation) "distributed in 9 choirs". The middle section is dominated by a globe of the World, on which is seated Musica, holding the lyre of Apollo and the panpipes of Marsyas. The globe is encircled by the Zodiac, and Musica holds also a streamer bearing the legend "Of Athanasius Kircher of the Society of Jesus, Universal Musicmaking or the Art ..." (being the beginning of the full title of the work). Round the last part of the streamer is displayed the dedication "To His Serene Highness Leopold William, Archduke of Austria." Other symbols in this section include rings of dancing mermaids on the shore, a shepherd trying out the echo and the winged horse of the Muses, Pegasus. The lowest part of the picture shows blacksmiths in a cave: the sound of blacksmiths hammering had led Pythagoras to important conclusions about the nature of pitch and the blacksmiths are acknowledged in the picture by being pointed out by Pythagoras, who also holds an illustration of his theorem, also using triangles, and hence referring obliquely once again to the top of the picture. The muse on the right may be Polymnia who appears in standard pose surrounded by musical instruments of various kinds. |
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| The plate shown above to the left depicts 'The Harmony of the Birth of the World' (Harmonia Nascentis Mundi), represented by a cosmic organ with six registers corresponding to the days of creation. The legend "Sic ludit in orbe terrarum aeterna Dei Sapientia" (thus plays the wisdom of the everlasting God in the earthly orb) appears under the keyboard. The six scenes follow Genesis as drawn by Robert Fludd, showing seas, earth, plants, planets, animals and man. | |
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The illustration below depicts a piazza-listening device: the voices from the piazza are taken by the horn up through the mouth of the statue in the room on the piano nobile above, allowing both espionage and the appearance of a miraculous event. |
 Vol. 2 (Af-x.10): plate between pages 302 & 303 |
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The arca musarythmica is a device by which a non-musician could compose a piece of four-part music using prearranged musical fragments inscribed in wands arranged in columns inside the box. Each type of wand corresponded to a particular metrical unit e.g. 4, 5, or 6 syllables, and on each wand there were examples of florid counterpoint on one side and more simple note-against-note settings on the other. Once the phrase to be set had been analyzed into its fundamental syllabic units, each of these could be set to an example taken from a wand of the appropriate type. There are many arcas still extant, including one in the Pepys Library of Magdalene College Cambridge. |
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The Athanasius Kircher Correspondence Project,
between the Universities of Stanford and Milan, shows us something of the
quality and variety of Kircher's eight hundred-plus regular correspondents: from
queens and emperors to the insane Mexican nun who gave herself a
make-over in the style of Osiris to keep up with Kircher's
descriptions in his Oedipus Egypticus. Others sent him chocolate
and other presents to keep his interest in them from flagging.
A man of obviously vast erudition and incredibly wide ranging interests, Kircher wrote more than forty books while he lived and worked in Rome; many of these astonishing volumes are available for consultation in Special Collections. |
Other items of interestOther copies of the 1650 edition of the Musurgia Universalis: Sp Coll E.x.42-42bis
(with an additional double-page engraved title page and one
handpainted plate inserted) and Sp Coll Bk4-d.5 Some other works by Kircher in Special Collections: See the Athanasius Kircher on the web site for further biographical details and other links of interest.
This month's feature was compiled by Liam Devlin (Director of Music, St Aloysius College) following a project completed as part of the HATII MSc in IT course. |
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Return to main Special Collections Exhibition Page Liam Devlin November 2002
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