Planetary tones

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Planetary tones are tones whose frequency is calculated on the basis of the rotation or revolution times of planets in the solar system in an octave-analog manner ( sonification ). The preoccupation with them is based on the desire of some music theorists to obtain a sound system based on astronomical periodic processes. Such endeavors ultimately go back to a number-oriented cosmic harmony and order thinking, which can already be found in the Pythagoreans , Plato and Aristotle and which is continued in Christian creation thinking (“God has everything well organized”), but no longer has a place in scientific physics . More recently, pseudoscientific ideas about energy and healing are also emerging. The idea that planets actually generate “ spherical sounds ”, i.e. some kind of music , through their orbit , is now considered a non-scientific, refutable hypothesis.

The tones calculated from the data of the earth are generally also assigned to the planet tones. The pitch (frequency) is set arbitrarily by successively doubling (octaving) the astronomically determined rotation or orbital frequencies until a frequency range that is easily audible to the human ear is reached. The tones are used in the western esoteric scene.

history

Johannes Kepler dealt with the ancient ideas of the sounds of the spheres in his work Harmonice mundi (here: Linz edition 1619)

The question of how one can represent “spherical harmonies” as true to nature as possible or in the greatest possible analogy to nature, occupied u. a. the musicologist Hans Cousto in the late 1970s. He knew that Johannes Kepler assigned the relations of the orbital speeds of the planets in aphelion and perihelion to musical intervals, but Kepler could not solve the question of a possible keynote with his approach. An attempt was made to find one or more fundamental tones that have an analogy to nature and do not correspond to the standard pitch of 440 Hz that is common today . So Cousto came up with the idea of ​​transferring astronomically known periods of rotation or periods of revolution of the earth around the sun into the human hearing range on the basis of arbitrary time units.

The music journalist and non-fiction author Joachim Ernst Berendt also called the planetary tones in his book The Third Ear - From Hearing the World (1988) also original tones . Berendt also released several music productions under the name Urtöne , all of which were based on these planetary tones .

use

The planetary tones are mainly used in the esoteric scene. Singing bowls , gongs , tuning forks and similar sound generators with the respective tones for use in meditations are produced for this market . Tuning forks with the planetary natural frequencies are also used naturopathically in phonophoresis (tuning fork tone puncture).

Occasionally these frequencies are used in music, mainly in meditation music and psytrance . The pianist and composer Matthias Junken developed a series of planetary tones by converting the rotation frequencies of the planets into tones perceptible to the human ear by multiplying them by a uniform factor of 100 million. In a television interview about the concept of infinity in music in 2002, he described this tone system, in which Pluto was still included as the ninth planet, as "a nine- tone scale that could be called Enneatonik after the Greek numeral ἐννέα ennéa 'nine' " Together with filmmakers he worked on an audio-visual implementation of his planetary sound series in the video installation “Enneatonik” as a film aesthetic and musical experimental work of art.

Calculating the pitch

Every planet has a certain frequency far below 1 Hz due to its orbit duration and self-rotation duration. If you multiply this frequency, you can get into an audible (20 Hz ... 20 kHz) or visible range (380 ... 700 nm wavelength).

In order to set the pitch in Hertz , the - average - duration of a revolution of the planet in an arbitrarily selected time unit, for example in seconds, is determined. This can be explained well using the example of the octave tone of the earth's rotation:

A mean sunny day has about 24 hours of 60 minutes of 60 seconds, for a total of 86,400 seconds. From this you can then calculate the reciprocal value of the period :

(86400 s) −1 = 1.1574 · 10 −5  Hz (daily frequency of the earth)

The calculated frequency is too low to be perceived by the human ear , especially since it is not available as a sound wave and is therefore not an audible "sound" regardless of its frequency.

The ear can only hear frequencies in the range of 16 Hz to 19,000 Hz . The frequency is therefore doubled (octaved) or multiplied in some other arbitrary way until a frequency that is easily audible is reached. The reciprocal of the period of the earth's rotation can, for example, be doubled 24 times in order to be clearly perceived by the ear:

1.1574 · 10 −5  Hz · 2 24 = 1.1574 · 10 −5  Hz · 16777216 = 194.179497984 Hz ≈ 194.18 Hz

Planetary sound frequencies

Sidereal planetary orbits

Planet /
dwarf planet 		Cycle time [h] Fundamental tone [Hz] Octaves Planetary tone [Hz]
Mercury 2111.3 131.57 · 10 −9 30th 141.27
Venus 5392.8 51.51 · 10 −9 32 221.23
earth 8766.2 31.69 · 10 −9 32 136.10
Mars 16488 16.85 · 10 −9 33 144.72
Jupiter 103982.1 2.67 · 10 −9 36 183.58
Saturn 258221 1.08 · 10 −9 37 147.85
Uranus 736462 3.77 · 10 −10 39 207.36
Neptune 1444503 1.92 · 10 −10 40 211.44
Pluto 2177573 1.28 · 10 −10 40 140.25

TV shows

  • BR-Alpha, 2000: The Harmony of the Planets. 30 min.
  • BR-Alpha, 2002: Ideas of Infinity - In Music. 15 min, third of three parts.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Matthias Junken , In: Ideas of Infinity - In Music. BR-Alpha, 2002.