This explanation will take a little longer as there is a lot to discuss about MT137. It is, in my opinion, the odd-man-out among all the other drawings in the work. It is the only one which doesn’t seem to portray a mechanical design, so what is its purpose? What follows is my solution.

As can be seen above, there is little difference between the two diagrams, and yet Bessler did the right one nearly three hundred years ago, the one on the left was done in 2007. These diagrams illustrate something which is used by musicians today. Johann David Heinichen, 1683-1729, a German musician, coined the term ‘circles of fifths’ in 1728. He was born and also got married in Weissenfels, the same place which Bessler moved to after Draschwitz, and close to Obergreisslau. In 1717 Heinichen became a colleague of Johann Sebastian Bach at the court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, then went on to be Kapellmeister to the Elector of Saxony. In 1721, Heinichen married in Weissenfels.

In the illustration above, the circle consists of the 12 musical pitches, which are arranged in such a way that any pair of adjacent pitches represents the interval of a perfect fifth. The ‘Circle of Fifths’ is an easy way to find out which key a song is in. It tells you how many sharps or flats are in a given key. It is called the ‘Circle of Fifths’ because as you go clockwise, you go up a fifth. For example, the fifth note of the C major scale is G. The fifth note of the G major scale is D, and so on. Now I don’t claim to fully understand that but I realized that the word "fifth" meant moving five notes up or down the scale.

Bessler lived in Weissenfels in 1714 and had a history of building organs. Heinichen must have been aware of the famous/infamous inventor and it is likley that they actually knew each other given the circumstances. The concept of the ‘circle of fifths’ had been around for more than a century and some argue that it can be traced back to China in the 15th century. There is an oral tradition that it had been used for many years as an aid to studying musical theory, passed on from teacher to student. Heinichen attempted to improve the design of the ‘musicalischer circul’, as it was called, but his design has fallen in to comparative disuse, however the term, ‘circle of fifths’ has survived but it now takes the form of the left figure above - a dodecagram.

I think that Bessler, as an organ builder and player, was familiar with this concept and used it for his own purposes, namely as yet another pointer to the number 5. This would appeal to a musician but is seemingly almost unknown outside the world of music. Heinichen is supposed to have coined the term in 1728 and Bessler altered his MT in 1733. They both lived in the same small town at the same time and were both moving within the same group of people. It seems to me to be too much of a coincidence that the term, ‘Circle of Fifths’ which is so apt a description of Bessler’s wheel, should have been coined at that time, in that place, under those circumstances, without Bessler’s knowledge. The diagram he produced as MT137, looks exactly similar to the modern version above.‘Circle of Fifths’

However Heinichen’s version of the circle of fifths looks like this:-

There is little if any similarity to the dodecagram and for the time being I am forced to admit that, without some evidence of a dodecagram linked to musical theory at that time, I cannot claim the connection is proven, no matter how strikingly coincidental the connection appears to be.

But there is further proof that Bessler specifically chose the dodecagram as a clue to the importance of the number five and you can read about it by clicking on MT137 B

For more information about Johann Bessler and to obtain copies of his books with English translations go to www.free-energy.co.uk

Copyright © 2009 John Collins.