Chapter 6 The Reception of the Timaeus in Medieval Music Theory and Practice

In: The Legacy of Plato's Timaeus
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Barbara Haggh-Huglo
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Abstract

In the Timaeus Plato begins with a myth of the harmonic composition of the universe as an explanation of its impressive order and beauty, which deeply influenced medieval music theory and cosmology. This chapter investigates how ideas about the harmonic structure of the World Soul (Timaeus 35b–36d) were interpreted and applied to speculative and practical music by many of the most important medieval music theorists, including Aurelian, the anonymous ninth-century authors of Musica and Scolica enchiriadis, Hucbald, Gerbert of Aurillac, Marchettus of Padua, Johannes de Muris, and Johannes Ciconia. Their thought was informed by Cicero’s and Calcidius’ Latin translations of the Timaeus and by authors such as Nicomachus of Gerasa, Macrobius, and Boethius. This chapter considers diagrams representing the World Soul and the earliest Western tone system and emphasizes how changing interpretations of the Timaeus in writings on music introduced instruments, led to different vocal and instrumental scales and judgments on consonance and dissonance, and provided a structure for a new Italian fourteenth-century notation.

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The Legacy of Plato's Timaeus

Cosmology, Music, Medicine, and Architecture from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century

Series:  Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, Volume: 353
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