Still farther out and still lower is Saturn, only a little more than a deep growl, in which a good ear can sometimes hear the individual vibrations. It covers a minor third, from D to B (D to B 1) just below the bass staff.

The distance from Mars to Jupiter is much greater than that between the inner planets … and Jupiter’s song is much deeper, in the baritone or bass, and much slower. … Next out from Earth is Mars, again with an eccentric orbit … it ranges from the C above middle C (c′′) down to about F# (f#′) and back, in nearly 10 seconds. Venus’s range is only about a quarter tone, near the E next above the treble staff (e′′′) Earth’s is about a half tone, from G (g′′) to G# at the top of that staff. Venus and Earth, in contrast, have nearly circular orbits. It has a very eccentric orbit (as planets go), which it traverses in 88 days its song is therefore a fast whistle, going from the E above the piano (e′′′′′) down more than an octave to about C# (c#′′′′) and back, in a little over a second. Mercury, as the innermost planet, is the fastest and the highest pitched. In his Harmonices Mundi of 1619, Johannes Kepler wrote, “The heavenly motions are nothing but a continuous song for several voices, to be perceived by the intellect, not by the ear a music which, through discordant tensions, through syncopations and cadenzas as it were, progresses toward certain pre-designed six-voiced cadences, and thereby sets landmarks in the immeasurable flow of time.” In 1979 Yale geologist John Rodgers and musician Willie Ruff scaled up the frequencies of the planetary orbits into the range of human hearing so that Kepler’s “harmony of the world” could become audible:

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