Thomas Schipperges's 2003 article (in German) in Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte, "Vom leeren Schein der Musik" ("On the Empty Appearance of Music"), provides a close analysis of Agrippa's treatment of music across the two main works, using this as a case study of the broader paradox between the DOP's enthusiasm for occult knowledge and De incertitudine's corrosive scepticism.

Music occupies a privileged position in the DOP. In Book I, Agrippa draws on the ancient Pythagorean and Neoplatonic traditions to argue that music operates through a real correspondence between the mathematical ratios of musical consonance and the mathematical ratios governing cosmic harmony. The practitioner who understands this correspondence can use music to influence the soul, to draw down stellar influx, and to harmonize the microcosm of the human body with the macrocosm of the celestial spheres. Music is not merely an art of pleasure but a form of natural magic, operating through the same principles of sympathy and analogy that govern all magical practice.

In De incertitudine, however, Agrippa's treatment of music falls into the same satirical category as all other arts: music is vain, music teachers are charlatans, the pretended effects of music are superstition, and the whole theoretical apparatus of musical cosmology is empty speculation. The contrast with the DOP's enthusiasm is stark and apparently contradictory.

Schipperges argues that this contradiction illuminates the structure of Agrippa's paradox rather than simply disqualifying one text or the other. The DOP's musical theory is genuine as a theory — Agrippa really does believe that the mathematical correspondences between music and the cosmos are real — but the practitioner's ability to verify and exploit those correspondences is always uncertain. Music could do what the magician claims; whether it actually does in any given case cannot be reliably determined. The scepticism of De incertitudine targets not the theoretical framework but the claim to practical mastery.

The article is particularly valuable for music historians and musicologists studying the Renaissance theory of musica mundana — cosmic music — and its relationship to practical musical theory. Schipperges shows that Agrippa's musical cosmology, while not original in its theoretical foundations, is unusual in its attempt to develop the cosmological principles into specific prescriptions for musical practice: which modes should be used to draw down which planetary influences, which rhythms harmonize with which elemental qualities. The DOP's musical chapters represent an important attempt to bridge the ancient theory of cosmic music with the practical demands of the magician-musician.