The Musical Measure of the Human Body
from: Lehrbuch der Harmonik by Hans Kayser (1891-1964)
Format 5 : 6 (Minor Third)
Kayser
writes, regarding these illustrations: “The search for a rational
understanding of the structure of the human form is ancient. Archaic
imagery is so strictly uniform that, even if we did not know of a
'canon,' we could assume that one or many very probably existed for
this early epoch in art. ... The ancient sculptors sought to elucidate
the factual qualities of these models, which they continuously created
anew in thousandfold modifications; this is shown in proportion grids
for reliefs found in Egyptian tombs, but above all in the legacy of the
famous 'Canon of Polyclitus,' of which we admittedly know nothing
specific, but which must have been authoritative to the highest degree
for the Greek sculptors. Almost all significant artists in the Italian
and German Renaissance studied proportions very earnestly, especially
those of the human form.”
Regarding the left side of the image: “I show the two figures (woman
and man) from Wyneken's table 5, but for clarification I include the
tonal ratios of the monochord. ... As one can see, Wyneken uses the
same measuring unit for man and woman, but divides the space of the man
(string-lengths) into third-ratios, and that of the woman into
fifth-ratios. Thus the top of the man's head (measured from below) is
5/6 of the unit, that of the woman 4/5 of the unit. ... To me, the most
interesting thing in this regard is the aspect of the tone evaluation
of the male-female ratio 5/6 : 4/5. ... This (by string-length) is the
ratio of the minor third 5/6 e
to the major third 4/5 e! ... In my Harmonia Plantarum
(pp. 201-206) I attempted to show that the third, whether major or
minor, is in itself not only the 'sex-tone' in the musical sense, since
it defines the major and minor triads, but also has the capability of
interpreting the problem of sexuality in a completely new way, as the
'pentadic' (fifth-) ratio in the morphological-metaphysical sense. Man
and woman, therefore, have on average the ratio of two third intervals
in their pure size-ratios, i.e. their pure external measurements hint
at the inner sexual relationship of the two sexes!”
Peter Neubäcker
Image 9
