André GABY

Original title: O esoterismo musical de Francesco Zorzi (1466-1540) na obra De harmonia mundi totius (1525)

Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance

Keywords: Christian Kabbalah, Esoterism, Philosophy of music, Pythagoreanism, Renaissance.

The humanism and the musical renaissance derived from it are both the result of Italian thinkers contact with the Neoplatonic and Hermes Trimegistus works – coming from Byzantium thanks to the fall of Constantinople in 1453 – and with Kabbalistic works brought by Jews definitively expelled from Spain. in 1492. Among so many names in Italian humanist thought, stands out in Venice the Franciscan friar Francesco Zorzi (Giorgi). He learned the Hebrew language and the teachings of Kabbalah, dedicating his intellectual efforts to the continuation of the synthesis work of ideas on spiritual elevation (Platonic, Aristotelian, Neoplatonic, Hermetic, Jewish, or Christian) initiated by Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. Zorzi believed that Kabbalah could prove the truths of the faith of Christianity present in the Bible, that is, the numbers generated by the letters of the Hebrew alphabet would be related to the Pythagorean “Harmony of the Spheres” conception, and the truths of the cosmos reality would be described in the scriptures enterlines of Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Our work consists of presenting to the Portuguese language community the esoteric-kabbalist musical conception present in the work Harmonia mundi totius by Francesco Zorzi, together with some extract’s translation into Portuguese.