Feeling Fluish… Just the Weblog of late… Out and about, so to check out:
Five conservative women bloggers.
Catholicism Computes; interesting blog, plus has the great Wordpress plugin for Catholics – Catholic Reference Extension which I, admittedly, have not gotten around to actually plugging in.
The Recovering Choir Director promises future leisure reading. I can relate to being a recovering choir director / organist / sacred musician and now, recovering priest: it’s brutal on the front lines! The gates of hell are no place to spend an eternity.
I’ve been Twitterring up a storm, but am now contemplating Friend Feed; the front lines often extend to social networking too, of course.
World news: The drama continues over Obama’s Birth Certificate. Sheesh…. what’s the big deal about a birth certificate? Most of us keep them handy, we take them when evacuating for storms, etc. Why expect any less from the president?
A new NASA study demonstrates that Solar Cycles are responsible for past warming, not mankind.
Just for fun: A Blonde-Star rescue call.
A cop confiscates marijuana, then bakes it in brownies and is calls 911 reporting his overdose.
Off to heal…
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Sacred Music,
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The Holy Trinity appears in this beautiful music book, by Father Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia Universalis, in the University of Glasgow’s collection. 
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.
Tagged as:
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