Musical Tastes of Dumbledore & Flamel (long)

[heidi tandy]

No: HPFGUIDX 3682

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Rita Winston" <catlady at w...> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Caius Marcius" <coriolan at w...> 
> wrote:
> 
> > The best definition of music I know is by the composer Ferruccio 
> > Busoni: "Music is myth, metaphysics, and magic."
> 
> He left out mathematics.
> 
> I think you weren't around when some people were inspired by 
> Dumbledore's reaction to singing the school song at the Arrival 
Feast 
> in Book 1: "Ah, music, a magic above all we teach here." They were 
> saying, suppose he meant it literally, suppose the way to dissolve 
> Voldemort is to sing harmonies with the Phoenix.

I think I missed it too, but it makes a lot of sense, especially if 
you've read a certain novel called The Eight by Katherine Neville, 
which is probably the basis for most of why I know whatever it is I 
know about alchemy and the synergy between music, magic, mathematics 
and the entire universe.

This is a long, 2 part post - the first is a little description of 
waves, the second is a little thought about magical music. 

Part 1:
In ancient greece, Pythagoras first described "the music of the 
spheres" - he thought the universe was composed of numbers, that just 
as the notes of a musical scale repeat, octave after octave, so all 
things in nature form a pattern which can be accessed with anyone who 
can synchronize themselves with said pattern - clearly, wizards in 
JKR's world are synchronized in that way. Pythagoras's theories form 
the basis for harmonic analysis, which is the basis for both 
acoustical physics and quantum physics. 
The basic idea is that any phenomena of a periodically recurring 
nature can be measured - as a wave (sound, light, heat, the tides,
the 
phases of the moon). Kepler used this theory to discover planetary 
motion, and Newton (who some of us believe is a wizard and was a 
professor at Merlin College, Cambridge!) used it to describe
universal 
gravitation and the equinoxes. Euler, in mathematics, used it to
prove 
that light was a wave form whose color depended on length, and 
Fouruer, in the 1700's, revealed the manner in which all wave forms, 
including atoms, could be measured.
Pythagoras taught music, equally with philosophy, mathematics and 
astronomy. He thougth sound waves washed through the universe, and 
comprised everything from the smallest sub-atomic particle on up. 
Waves hold molecules together, and by manipulating the waves, with 
sound (like a Phoenix song), you can do magic. 
One little note - Pythagoras came from Phoenicia, the same place as 
the mythical origin of the Phoenix bird. 

Part 2 - I remember some earlier posts discussing the idea that until 
a few hundred years ago, people believed in wizardry & witchcraft - 
why? perhaps because it was part of life- perhaps toward the
sidelines 
in a parallel community, but with occasional intersection - and
before 
the age of reason, most people had no need to NOT believe that magic 
was real - and then at some point, magic and reason separated. 
Obviously, a lot of music from before that time, especially by those 
magicians like Bach who were interested in (if not obsessed with) 
alchemy and mathematics, may have been created by wizards or on a 
commission from wizards (the same way that, if you read Neil Gaiman, 
you know that Midsummer Night's Dream was written on a commission
from 
Faerie). More modern music from the rock & roll era? My theory is
that 
a lot of one hit wonders were wizard kids who came to rock in the 
Muggle world, had one great hit, and then joined the ministry of
magic 
& dropped off the face of the muggle world for a while. Sort of the 
way some Amish kids have a year or two of the "modern world" before 
returning to the community. What else could explain the video for 
Safety Dance? (I'm showing my age!)