The Harmonies of the World by Johannes Kepler

Therefore astronomical experience bears witness that the universal consonances of all the movements can take place, and in the two modes [generum], the major and minor, and in both genera of form, or (if I may say so) in respect to two pitches and in any one of the four cases, with a certain latitude of tuning and also with a certain variety in the particular consonances of Saturn, Mars, and Mercury, of each with the rest; and that is not afforded by the intermediate movements alone, but by all the extreme movements too, except the aphelial movement of Mars and the perihelial movement of Jupiter; because since the former occupies f sharp; and the latter, d Venus, which occupies perpetually the intermediate e flat or e, does not allow those neighbouring dissonances in the universal consonance, as she would do if she had space to go beyond e or e flat. This difficulty is caused by the wedding of the Earth and Venus, or the male and the female. These two planets divide the kinds [genera] of consonances into the major and masculine and the minor and feminine, according as the one spouse has gratified the other—namely, either the Earth is in its aphelion, as if preserving [298] its marital dignity and performing works worthy of a man, with

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[paragraph continues] Venus removed and pushed away to her perihelion as to her distaff; or else the Earth has kindly allowed her to ascend into aphelion or the Earth itself has descended into its perihelion towards Venus and as it were, into her embrace, for the sake of pleasure, and has laid aside for a while its shield and arms and all the works befitting a man; for at that time the consonance is minor.

Here at the most grave tuning, Saturn and the Earth join in with their aphelial movements; at the mean tuning, Saturn with its perihelial and Jupiter with its aphelial; at the most acute, Jupiter with its perihelial.