The Cosmic Octave: Origin of Harmony, Planets, Tones, Colors, the Power of Inherent Vibrations

Rating:
Summary: VERY GOOD READING!!!!
Review: A MUST READ FOR MUSICANS ON THE VANGUARD OF THE 22ND CENTURY! VERY THOUGHT PROVOKING!

Rating:
Summary: Inspiration for a post-Classical artist
Review: After finding that one of my favorite post-Classical composers is a big fan of this book, I've decided to remove my previous reviews of it -- even though I dislike the style and think most of the content without interest or merit. The composer is Elodie Lauten who has written the wonderful DEUS EX MACHINA CYCLE for voices and Baroque ensemble, which is not (currently) carried by amazon.com but is carried by classicalCDs.net. Take a look at http://www.elodielauten.net/ where you will find various writings that discusses Cousto's book and other sources of inspiration.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: I just changed my old review. You can prove anything with numbers. So far, I have not been able to find a good honest book on the octave. Goethe and Nicomachus died before they finished theirs, and it seems that no one since then has come close to writing anything credible. Out of all of the books I have read this one comes the closest, but its still far from the truth.

Rating:
Summary: Numerology Pretending to be Science
Review: I'm a scientist-type who purchased this to learn more about the Music of the Spheres. My take on the book is that it misapplies concepts from music and physics to arrive at frequency values for planets that correspond to those of common tuning pitches of different instruments, symphonic groups, and so forth. But to arrive at these pitches, for instance, the author assumes without explanation or justification an arbitrary "octave number" that gets the derived pitches in the range of these tuning pitches. It's arbitrary and more properly called numerology than anything resembling science. If you want to learn anything of interest concerning the Music of the Spheres, stay far away from this junk.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: I'm no idiot (I have an honours degree in psychology and an MBA) but this book was completely incomprehensible to me. If I lived in the States I would have returned it! I suspect only readers with a scientific education can appreciate this book - and maybe they'll find it excellent - but it definitely is not for the generalist.

Rating:
Summary: Strictly for the scientific minded
Review: I'm no idiot (I have an honours degree in psychology and an MBA) but this book was completely incomprehensible to me. If I lived in the States I would have returned it! I suspect only readers with a scientific education can appreciate this book - and maybe they'll find it excellent - but it definitely is not for the generalist.

Rating:
Summary: Recommended for students of New Age metaphysics.
Review: In The Cosmic Octave, mathematician and musician Hans Cousto shows the reader the intimate connection between levels of vibrating periodical phenomena and how the revolutions of the planets are related to musical beats, sounds and colors -- as well as the microcosmic vibratory qualities of a single cell. The Cosmic Octave will prove to be of great and enduring interest for students of metaphysics, the harmonics of music, and the relationships of colors, tones, and the cosmology of planets.

Rating:
Summary: Recommended for students of New Age metaphysics.
Review: In The Cosmic Octave, mathematician and musician Hans Cousto shows the reader the intimate connection between levels of vibrating periodical phenomena and how the revolutions of the planets are related to musical beats, sounds and colors -- as well as the microcosmic vibratory qualities of a single cell. The Cosmic Octave will prove to be of great and enduring interest for students of metaphysics, the harmonics of music, and the relationships of colors, tones, and the cosmology of planets.

Rating:
Summary: Cousto's Octave Numbers
Review: Mr Cowles' and my previous reviews do not clearly enough reveal an important point about this "arbitrary factor" needed to obtain tuning-pitch range frequencies. It is not a single number that all planets share in common: a different value is needed for each planet. In other words the author has developed an equation that fits the data with the help of an unexplained factor for every data point. If you still think that's interesting, go for it.

Rating:
Summary: A Book of Both Power and Incredible Import
Review: Mr. Eric Hirschorn's review does a great disservice to this scholarly work. I see that 22 out of 24 readers of his review said it helped them. I would hate to think that so many were missing out on a worthy treatise on how the Universe is mathematically put together. I hope to undo some of his damage with my review.
I have Masters degrees, including Math, Physics and Chemistry. I understand the details of what this book puts forth. I can say with resounding thanks, that all is well, read in harmony, in the Universe and this book goes a long way past other proofs.
What Mr. Hirschorn objects to, a factor that successfully reduces the periodic orbits and frequencies of each body in our solar system, defies many mathematical traditions. The author may not understand the significance of this factor, as we did not understand the significance of Pi for so many centuries.
The fact that the sun, planets and moon stand in the same frequency ratio as the notes on our most harmonic scale is the point, a brilliant one at that. In number theory, a science worthy of the best minds, we seek to understand these relationships between quantities. What Mathematician can explain the Law of Nines in our own number system? Mr. Hirschorn may reduce the studied body of work on that subject alone to mere "ramblings of numerology," our best minds have thought otherwise.
How can one be a mathematician and not a musician? The significance of what we see to what we hear, the frequencies we respond to and how they repeat themselves from DNA outward, are the stuff we were made to understand.
This book takes us further than we have traveled before. Have a great voyage! Once you leave the portal of what we don't want to be true, and travel into the awesome resonance of the Universe and what we see before us, your eyes, heart and mind will be in for so many surprises. Don't miss this one...