and the musical modes played with them represented the temperaments
and humors of the body, the four elements, the planets, and the zodiac.^2
Contrary to Aristotle’s argument against the music of the spheres, al-Kindi
adopted the Pythagorean and Platonic theories of celestial harmonies.
Correlating pitch and the length of a plucked string, Pythagoras had
associated the mathematical proportions of notes and string lengths with
the sound he imagined created by planetary movement. Plato referenced
this in theRepublic, saying:“It is probable that as the eyes arefixed on
astronomy, so the ears arefixed on harmonic movement, and these two
kinds of knowledge are in a way akin, as the Pythagoreans say.”^3
Stopping short of understanding arithmetic as the universal principle,
al-Kindi describes a universe stacked with theoretically significant simili-
tudes through which the philosopher recognizes the affective realm of
music.
Thefalakis the proximate efficient cause of change in the sensible world. It affects
the seasons, generation and corruption, the distribution and the combining of hot–
cold, dry–moist. The last are related to the four elements:fire–hot and dry; air–
warm and moist; water–cold and moist; earth–cold and dry. In so far as the
celestial sphere affects the epochs and seasons which in turn affect the character
and mores of peoples.^4
He understood musical therapy as selecting notes to realign bodily humors
with celestial patterns. He associated the three emotional ranges of joy,
sorrow, and impetuosity with specific rhythmical cycles.^5 Although later
authors described different iconographies of sound, all recognized music
through cosmological similitude.^6 By the sixteenth century, medical prop-
erties were attributed to particular modes used in art music. For example,
rastaided hemiplegia, while‘iraqaided humoral disorders such as brain
diseases, vertigo, pleurisy, and suffocation. Mental hospitals continued to
use choirs and musicians as a regular part of treatment much later, in
Ottoman Cairo and Edirne.^7
Stories about the semi-legendary musician Abu al-Hasan‘Ali ibn Nafi
(759–857), nicknamed Ziryab, reflect this association between music and
the humors.^8 Of partial African descent (perhaps a freed slave), he per-
formed at the court of the fourth Abbasid caliph, Harun al-Rashid (r. 789–
857) in Baghdad. His education included astronomy, botanics, cuisine, and
fashion. Migrating to the Umayyad court in Cordoba around 813, he(^2) Shiloah, 2007 : 78. (^3) Quoted in Walbridge, 2000 : 68. (^4) Shehadi, 1995 : 26.
(^5) Wright, 2010 :83n. 28. (^6) Shehadi, 1995 :20–26. (^7) Shiloah, 2007 : 73, 75.
(^8) Shannon, 2015 :38–39.
58 Seeing with the Ear