Leigh Penman wrote: It's interesting, but did alchemy substantively influence the nature or character of his music? Or vice versa? I suppose that's the hard question!
Michael Maier's music sounds quite weirdly beautiful to my ears, and I would love to know why it sounds so otherworldly. Even Robert Fludd's music, mediocre by comparison, has an ethereal quality.
I think Arne was motivated more by intellectual curiosity and (perhaps even more so) by financial desperation than by esoteric interests, but he does seem to have been a member of the William Beckford circle. See: