Category Archives: Music of the Spheres

An orrery, also called a planetarium, shows the choreography of planets as they dance with coordinated precision around the Sun.  Early models were geocentric (Earth-centered), including the ancient Antikythera device and large mechanical clocks. This model was made in Paris … Continue reading →

Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia universalis (Rome, 1650) This 17th-century treatise on music shows a mechanical, water-driven harpsichord. Water enters on the right side of the diagram, turning a gear mechanism that animates a cylinder roll and keyboard. Musical notation cut into … Continue reading →

Vincenzo Galilei, Dialogo della Musica Antica et della Moderna (Florence, 1581) From childhood, Galileo’s world was shaped by music. His father, Vincenzo Galilei, was a prominent music theorist who contributed to the development of Italian opera. This book, Vincenzo’s major … Continue reading →

Johann Kepler, Mysterium cosmographicum (Tübingen, 1596) By far the best known 16th-century defender of Copernicus was Johann Kepler. In this work he demonstrated that vast empty regions lying between the planetary spheres, which were required by Copernicus, were not wasted … Continue reading →

Nicolaus Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (Nuremberg, 1543) Copernicus argued that the Sun rather than the Earth lies in the center of the universe. The Earth moves as a planet around the Sun. In 1543 little proof was available that … Continue reading →

This replica combines two armillary spheres into one, containing models for both the Sun and the Moon.  The annual motion of the Sun along the “ecliptic,” its apparent path around the sky, is inclined to the Earth’s equator by 23.5°.  … Continue reading →

Brian Grieg (2014) The astrolabe, one of the fundamental instruments for observational astronomy, consists of three major parts: the mater, or underlying disk; the climate, a removable disk adjusted for latitude; and the rete, a ring marked with star positions. … Continue reading →

Peter Apian, Cosmographia (Antwerp, 1545) In this introduction to astronomy and geography, the Moon lies embedded within a solid sphere carrying it around the Earth once a month. The solid sphere explains why the same side of the Moon always … Continue reading →