Abstract

This article concerns early music, the voice, and early music historiography. In his Harmonies of the World of 1619, Johannes Kepler makes an audacious construction that claims to link celestial harmonies with earthly polyphony singing. Following the lead of Gary Tomlinson, I consider this construction in the light of several ideas from poststructuralism, with a focus on the writing of Foucault, Lacan and Deleuze. Using the voice and its histories as a guide, the article culminates in a discussion of a suitable ‘vocal historiography’.