“Music is well said to be the speech of angels,” wrote Thomas Carlyle, the leading 19th-century Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher.
Before the geocentric understanding of the universe was dismantled by Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei’s observations, people believed the Earth was the center around which the planets, stars, sun, and moon revolved. This conception of the universe originated the Pythagorean philosophical concept of “musica universalis” (“universal music”), also known as “music of the spheres.”
Although this universal music was not audible to human ears, the idea was that the celestial bodies moved in such a way that produced frequencies and hums based on their orbits, and that the soul could perceive this inaudible musical harmony.
Gloria’s Tonal Mood
In Thomas Wilmer Dewing’s 1884 composition “Gloria,” four singing angels wielding harps are depicted in a manner reminiscent of 14th-century medieval manuscripts. The compressed, small-scale drawing uses pastel tones in gouache over graphite to portray the angels who each don a patterned, flowing dress and have a large set of wings.
Harp and Heavenly Harmony
The harp’s association with heavenly or celestial music can be traced back to ancient civilizations and is found in the artistic traditions of ancient Egypt and Greece. In ancient Egypt mythology, the harp was associated with the goddess Hathor, a deity of many realms, including maternity, beauty, and music. In an epitaph used to praise Hathor, the goddess is described as the “mistress of music,” the “queen of harp playing.” In ancient Greece, the god Apollo was often depicted playing a lyre, a stringed instrument comparable to a harp. Apollo’s lyre is an image of celestial harmony, or the music of the spheres.
In the Christian tradition, particularly the Old Testament, the harp is mentioned many times in association with spiritual healing and worship. David, known for his musicality, used his harp to banish evil spirits from King Saul. This is one of many instances in the Old Testament where David plays the harp to induce the divine realm’s healing properties.
Celestial Movement
“Gloria” conveys the effect of being swept up in an eddy of air and held aloft by soft, melodious notes of heaven. Not painted as grounded, the angels appear to be whirling about in a spiral. The bottom right corner of the drawing is especially effective at expressing this sense of movement. Dewing simulates the crinkly, blurred effect of taffeta in motion by layering the windswept fabric behind the harp strings, where differing patterns converge harmoniously. Aurally evoked is the sound of dresses brushing up against each other in a ballroom. Within the seemingly disordered textures and decorative elements, there is an order to the composition brought about through color harmony and the arrangement of abstract shapes.
Dewing also plays with line and pattern by subtly varying the weight of his lines. The harp strings fade in and out of focus—their relative opacities and transparencies creating the effect of a glossy or reflective surface catching the light.
Music-Making Angels
Another example of the association between music and the heavenly realm can be found in Melozzo da Forlì’s fresco fragments of angels playing instruments. Between 1480–1484, da Forlì, an Italian Renaissance painter and architect, painted the vault of the apse at the Santi Apostoli in Rome—a project commissioned by Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere.
The subject of the commission was the “Ascension of Christ,” and the fresco is one of the first extant examples of perspective being successfully applied to the human figure on ceiling decorations. In 1711, under Clement IX, the fresco was removed and divided into 16 fragments when the apse was dismantled to renovate the church. Today, only these 16 fragments of the original fresco remain, some of which depict music-making angels. These, along with paintings of the Apostles, are now on exhibition in the Vatican Pinacoteca and Museo del Prado.
In one of the fresco fragments, an angel in profile plays the lute, his gaze focused on a scene beneath him. The vibrant, gem-like tones used to portray the angel’s hair, clothing, and the fresco’s background, creates a shared color harmony with the other four angels in the collection.
In 1415, music theorist Nicolaus de Capua wrote a treatise called “Compendium Musicale.” He replaced the “musica mundana,” that had originated in ancient Greece and survived through Boethius’ codification, with “musica angelica,” or angelic music. In this way, the concept of universal music—which had its roots in Pythagorean thought—was replaced in the Middle Ages with the Christian notion of angelic choirs, or the song of the angels.
“Musica angelica” is what da Forlì portrayed in his fresco. The sense of the heavenly realm would have been augmented by the fresco’s place in situ, where worshippers would gaze upward toward the heavens, their eyes met by the painter’s skilled foreshortening. The angelic choir expressed in chromatic pigments heightened the expression of the instrumental music played during the liturgy, invoking the presence of the angelic choirs from on high.
