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    OFFICERS OF THE SociETY 78.9) Present £4. KENNEY Count: CL AUSTIN (he A.B WALLACEHADRILL (Meigs Secretary), D.N.SEDLEY (Programme Secretary), RG.G. COLEMAN, PE EASTERLING, AM SNODGRASS Euitors of the Proceedings: E.3, KENNEY, 1. DIGGLE The objects of the Society are he furtherance of clases studies in genera, and ture anu evlzation of Greeee mmofamember resent on of aresident research stents 2.50, The subse | member resident ehewhere 1 £2.50 annually. Members receive notices ofall meetings ofthe Soaety aod he Procredings ‘Any library may subscribe tothe snes £5.00 pee anim, ety and receive comtes ofthe Proctedings. The subscription for The Sox Proceedings ofthe Cambridge Pilotagical Socety con octet and other ls by members, appears annually, Contributions intended fr the Proceedings should be addressed to Professor E. 1. Kenney, Peterhouse, Cambridge CB2 IRD. ‘Supplements to the Proceedings, consisting of monograph, are a occas 1 sponsible fortwo series of oublcations, ning papers read to sees appearing less ioworxsofintermediaesize, i proposals for monogrannsto be Campridge CR? eavons for membership, and all other coresondince rtaing to te Socety sould be addressed to Dr, Austin. : (OI KAAOYMENOI * APMONIKOE: THE PREDECESSORS OF ARISTOXENUS A cursory glance at the reports ofthe later students of harmonic theory isenough to give a clearif perhaps artificially systematic picture of the character and relations, of the major conflicting schoo's of thought in the first century or so A.D. In the centre of the field are the supposed followers of Aristoxenus. lined up against the forces of the so-called Pythagoreans. Each side is linked with a more or less tunatie fringe; to the right of the Pythagoreans those mathematical extremists who find no place in harmonic studies for alo®ors at all, and to the left of the more empirical Aristoxeneans a collection of persons known as opyaviKoi, whose work, Whatever 1 was, 18 based wholly in perception and in familianty with the properties of musical instruments, and who find no place for theory or for the pursuit of the itiat of harmonic truths. ‘Though Aristoxenus would have been horrified at some of the views espoused by és reputed followers, and though what came together under the title of “Pythagorean’ doctrine had many diverse sources, there 18 no doubt that at least a solid amount of what is attributed to these schools by such writers as Ptolemy and Porphyry quite genuinely goes back to the fourth century, to Anistoxenus on the one hand, and perhaps 0 Archytas and his followers on the other. It may be this fact that has tempted commentators to read back the line-up of forces which Ptolemy found in his day into the late fourth century itself The picture presented is of Anistoxenus, himself a self-conscious mnovator, im arms primarily against entrenched battalions of Pythagoreans, and occasionally hitting out m an sncidental way at a relatively significant super-empirieist fringe to. whose members he gives the name GpyoviKoi. 1 shall argue that this preture is quite wrong. Let us begin with the Pythagoreans, supposedly Anstoxenus’ prineipal opponents. It might perhaps be thought strange, bbut is 1s not too surprising, that he never once mentions them by that name. There ‘might be all sorts of reasons for that. Its possibly a shade more surpstsing that he never mentions by name any individual whom we could now recognise as a Pythagorean ~ Archytas, for example. Thirdly, we are entitled to wonder why, in stating those of his doctrines which plainly do run counter to Pythagorean positions, Aristoxenus fails to mention the fact that this conflict exists, and makes no attempt to explain it. As to explicit criticisms, out of the 35 or 40 passages in the Elements sn wich Aristoxenus dizecty attacks the vicars of contemporaries and predecessors, only one (32.20, is gertainly dirécied against {he Pythagorean, and on my understanding of it only One other every might be. Pinall), i Senis'édd. to 89438 2 A. BARKER say the least, that m a number of passages Aristoxenus makes quite general claims about his predecessors’ failure even to consider certain topics, when in several significant cases we have good evidence that Pythagorean theonsts had already looked at them in some detail. These points must at tcast suggest that there is something amiss with the commonly imagined scenario of a fight to the death between Aristoxenus and the Pythagoreans. On the contrary, he seems largely to hhave ignored them. ‘On the other side, his complaints against the apyovikoi, the more obviously are very frequent. But I shall argue that this is not to say tha regards them as representing @ school of thought opposed to his own, or as some specially characterised group of eccentrics. He recognises, | group of dpriovixoi out on the far left, from which he wishes to rather, he gives the label apovixds to anyone whom he recognises as working in the same field as nimself, and would, I think, have cheerfully accepted thi appellation for himself. He eticases those who fall under this neading not as ‘methodological heretics or eccentrics, but as having failed to do their work properly ~ work which he will now do much better. Of course, he may be quite wrong about this, rather as Aristotle has been criticised for seemg the Presocraties as trying and failing to be Anstotie: but for the present we are trying to see the relation as he imself perceived | shall suggest that the reason why he has solittle to say about the Pythagoreans is imply that he does not recognise tiem as attempting the samme task, If their work with which he was certainty familiar 1s significant at all, it1s so ina different field, and is not relevant to him. Thus his view of his own intellectual environment is entirely different from that of the historians of the Aristoxenean and Pythagorean schools of later antiquity, despite the fact that the basis of these latter accounts 1s Ay to be found in the fourth century. There are even those in the fourth whose understanding of the situation is not dissimilar: Theophrastus 4s conceivably a case in point.* But Theophrastus is not Aristoxenus. ‘The significance of these pretiminary remarks will, hope, come outin the sequel, since my object in this paper isto say something about the background of previous research against which Aristoxenus is working. In order to do this T must pursue this same theme a litte further, with the aim of providing some evidence for the ‘latms I have made so far: having done that I shall devote the remainder of the paper to the attempt to see what, if anything, can be said about the work of those whom Anstoxenus does regard as his rivals and predecessors. It will not be much, since they are scarcely known except from Aristoxenus himself, and his comments are almost invariably negative; but the attempt seems worth making, since sofar as can discover remarkably litle has previously been written about those early musica! theonsis who cannot comfortably be sheltered under the “Pythagorean umbrella I shall begin by summarising the evidence on which I base my contention that ‘THE PREDECESSORS OF ARISTOXENUS 3 Aristoxenus found tne work of the Pythagoreans im this field no more than irrelevant. ‘The central part of the Pythagorean programme seems to have been the analysts of the primary intervals of the scale m terms of mathematical ratios.” Given this preoccupation it was natural for them to ask what these ratios are ratios of, and this question leads directly to the analysis of sound in terms of movement, and of variation in piten in terms of variation m the ‘number’ of that movement, 1.6, it speed.‘ There were various theories as to the character of the variable velocity or whieh piten depended. Two were of particular importance, the view adopted by Plato, probably by Archytas, and certainly by a number of writersin the Peripatetic tradition, that it was the velocity at which a sound is propagated; and the thesis ibed to that rather shadowy figure known as Heraclides Ponticus, that it wa the frequency of the vibration of the moving ai.* But Aristoxenus dismisses all such speculations out of hand. pr} taparrét@cay 8° Ais ai tv etc KwHOEIs aysvtE\ ‘ois @BSyyoUug S6Eat Kai KaBSKOU THY pov RivtIOW Elva pacKsvTOV, Hesays a 12.46. His point, emphasised several times on Meiboms pages 9-11. 1s that suct considerations have no bearing on the proper subject of harmonies, which is th character of musical sound as heard, The physical conditions ofits production an fof no harmonic imterest.§ 32.20 ff. is the one passage which deals plainly and directly with Pythagoreas theory, Here Aristoxenus describes one class of his predecessors a aiorpiodoyotvees Kat THY uév Glonow eKkhivovtes ac odeay OOK AxorPT vonrac Bt xaraoKeiZovtes alttag Kat paoKOVTES ROyoUC Te twvas aplBUBY elva ‘eat tdign pds GAAMAA EV Ole TS Te OED Kai tO lupo yiyvera, All the marks o Pythagorean theory are here ~ the preference given to reason over perception, th analysis of piteh relations by means of numerical ratios, and the account of ai tO apd in terms of physical velocities. The authors of such speculations ar ily stigmatised as aXAotpwortroug ASyous héyOvtES Ka EvavTL@TATONS Tol ‘patvouévoic; and apart from the remark in the following paragraph that harmon: is not geometry, and must make use of precise and accurately trasned alan, th school of thought is never referred to again It is evident that Aristoxenus sees n need to purse them on points of detail ~ the1r entire methodology rules them ou from scrious consideration in this context. Thirdly, as an example of te way A\ 1e neglects Pythagorea researches, consider his repeated assertion (2. -13, and elsewhere) thi none of oi Eunpoo€ey studied any of the musical genera other than th enharmonic.” The claim is puzzling in a number of ways, and Ishall return to st, bu for tne moment the poist 1s sumplc and ciear. Unless our information in Ptolem and Porphyry is altogether wrong - and though there are serious difficulues ¥ don think that i 1s ~ all three of the genera had been studied and given complete, controversial, mathematical analyses by Archytas.* Even if we reject this eviden« the difficuity remains, since there 18 no doubt at all nat the scheme of ratios used 4 A BARKER Plato in the Timaeus yields a scale which is not enharmonic, but diatonic.’ Thu fact that at teast this other form of the scale had been given a quantitative analys can scarcely have been unknown to Aristoxenus: Dut the analysis is Pythagorean, set in terms of K6yo1 dpiOudv, and is therefore irrelevant, Hence, though the ‘question of the origin of a systematic distinction between the genera rematns vexed and problematic ~ I shall say more about it below ~ these passages provide further evidence of a high order that Anstoxenus did not consider Pythagorean analyses as falling within he harmonics many items of substantive le with the Pythagorean approach. Two ‘obvious ones arc his assertion and proof that tne interval ofa fourth is and his assumption that no problem is presented by thi ‘Yet he nowhere mentions that such claims are Further, there was in the Pythagorean system one glaring and obvious flaw, that while the interval of an octave plus a fourths clearly heard as a concord, 1n the system of Pythagorean ratios it has to be classified as & discord.!? The interval in question appears in Aristoxenus’ list of concords at 45.8- 22, without any relevant comment; and one could hardly suppose that anyone wit so waspish a tongue as he could have resi ning, even in passing, so unambiguous an embarassment to his opponents, had he considered. rem to be opponents at all but that the label 1s used by those contemporaries and predecessors whom he takes in his own field. The case 1s not easy to make out nm to have presented proof: but the considerations which I stall mention seem to me to carry some Weight First let me recapitulate and elaborate briefly the position whieh T want to contest. Pozphyry, m his commentary on Ptolemy's Harmonics, ‘mus, and Ptolemais of Cyrene, to en Anstoxeneans and Pythagoreans understood." Broadly speaking there are two major di uyse pitch-relations, concords, and intervals generally in terms of }¢ Anistoxeneans treat pitches as points on an audi rated by certain distances. This a fascinat {shall say tas not my main focus here. Secondly, and for present purposes more crucially, they differ m their understanding of the roles of 2.0705 and dicot. Both bee from dioOnorc: both recognise subsequently a role for Aoyos, but for the Pytnagoreans, once the starting point has been adopted, Aoyo% sth eri its results confi io®norc, this merely proves the latier’s ingecuracy and Anistoxenus to designate. to be working ‘THE PREDECESSORS OF ARISTOXENUS unreliability. For the Aristoxeneans, apjovuna is concerned wholly with that whic can be heard, and it studies the laws of music as heard, All judgments mu therefore eventually be brought back to the test of dlo®norc, andif reason purpor gone astray, Aside from these two main-stream approaches, Ptolemass also recognises ( Prec ana who mal : Shame, put in'that they Ehe no demonstrations or arguments fo support Seromons, Skin praieforms he soe bass for he celosons hey Teach 3 he pte them the hame opyaveo! or @ovOKNO Now ts erect ae tnara amber of thee eto the effec that tey Ae overempin the stuctore of etl instruments, at hey present évapndvioc.) It would, term to be recognised here as the for ol Euxpoodey, and the pun is made possible by a combination of the comm ise of épovi6s to refer to a student of harmonic theory with the special sense pnovia Which designates the enharmonic genus. the paragraph which follows Anistoxenus attributes several shortcomings these predecessors, One 1s therr failure to consider any but the enharmonic gen e attributes ‘whose use t fal nog 11-17). They ct 6 A. DARKER, he arrangement of the octave, and not of the other yeyéBy and orpiwara @.17-25), No one, he says, has dealt with these other matters, and what they have discussed they have treated imperfectly ~ as ne himself has shown previously dee emzaxonotyiev ras vv apuovixdy 8Eas (2,25-30) Iisa great pity that tne work he here refers tos lost. But at leas that he is making no di generally, Passages from elsewhere nthe work confirm this first impression. The failure of his predecessors to consider any but the enharmonic genus 1 referred to again at 35.1-13: here the word &pyovtrds does not occur: we are simply told that no one hhas worked on the other genera. We seem to meet the ‘diagrams’ joned in section 2 mn at least three other passages, all associated with the term Karanixvwots, The reference s apparently tothe representation of scales ona map or diagram consisting of a line divided at sntervals of an entiarmonie diesis, ot quarter-tone, and I shall go into its significance in some detail later. One passage (53.3-11) mentions in connection with the concept of continuity, 8 2£¥¢, and uses the phrase of cls tv xaturtxvecty Bhénoveas: this makes Atistoxenus’ predecessors employed xt. In an eat concerning continu tats rv Stay py seems clear tion as yet between ot Appovixoi and ol EuRpotey (27.34-28.3) also We are told Enrntéov 6 x6 cuvezts ody dc ot appovrxor Ey katanvevoceow axodtBévat neipiv plain the term karabxvoots and the use of the as of tipyovexol. In yet another passage speaking of modulation and the proper relation of ovarywava to toxot,7 he says that weshould dicuss them on npg thy katandxvoo BASroveas KaQanap of appovixot: and again (7.30-2) that some of ot apyovixo! have touched on the matter xavé-tiyny, not with this issue in mind but xararvrvGout Bovowevors 19 ‘Stéypaywa. Again we seem to have a clear association of of dppovixoi with Karantikvoots, and this might easily be taken toindicate a reference to some special school: yet the very same sentence continues KaQ6Aov 8 odSevi oxeBOv ty Tote Eunpoatey pavepov yeyévnra: r008 Ayty. which the reference of the term apuovexot isin fact quite general, certainly sug, are al any rate not justified in following Macran’s preyudi rendering oi8evi as ‘no single writer belonging to this sch If the associations of own, my case would be at best flimsy. The evidence, ifanything, would go the other way; ana these passages more than balance out the argument which I based on his references to his predecessors’ obsession story, however, when We come to hi them for failing to deal properly with oyripera ang yeyé6n other than the octave. We have seen that these failures were described am his work concerning tac tiv opovixidy 86Eac. On Meibom's pages 5-6 this criticism is elaborated, with reference ex Eratocles, who is not known from any other source. Is return to him later, but “THE PREDECESSORS OF ARISTOXENUS, conclusions. generally with a there are the ‘whagoreans, who are irrelevant, and there arc (ag Ka dnoBeiEews, and who do not even make adequate enumeration of abta ra gatvoueva (32.20-31). It ean hardly be do that Eratocles is here being taken as represent at least the expressions oi Euxpoo¥ey and ot GpHoviKot the same reference. fe to mention briefly ‘0 other passages. At 37,8-35 he scems to Tsnould vs proof of his assertion that no one (00 the fact that the treatment of this subject mentions three conflicting groups of claims made about tovor by diff rely random; an cho ol approver Gppovixoi, This at least shows that the apHovecot are not a mono! seems also to indicate that 2 bundle of information abou tantamo 1n about all his predecessors. wath the thesis that the aim of his science T shall discuss further below, is si attributed after the long passage 1s com} aapuovixot are named, ina rather ambiguous expression embedded in the cia ev obv Sv ayvoLay THY OASAMYLY CATHY EoZAIKAOLY Ot KaotLEVO! GPHOVE (40.25-6). Now this expression might easily be read as “the so-called Gpjo\ and taken to name this supposed special school, But if that 1s right. ‘Aristoxenus not make the attribution at the beginning of the argument? Hi done nothing to show that the people he 1s talking about betong to some sp schoo! ~ they are so far merely tives. The point, I think, 1s contemptuous ‘Anstoxenus is here in a particularly scathing mood. “These so-called 6p}.ov ‘means ‘these people who dignify inemselves with the honourable title of studer deserve it’. point fe this survey of the evidence in the te he notion that ol apyove id expect to find spectal criticisms also attached to other sp ing of the kind 1s to be found, apart from one off-hand meomprehensible reference to the much older musteian Lasos of Hermione 4), At least one Would expect to meet eniticism of kinds of approach, met! doctrine which are not those associated explicitly with ot apovixot; but so either. As far as \age, though there 1s one focus of ensticism, the v katarikveots, which Is always linked with the term appovixos, th no significant focus of 8 A. BARKER Pythagorcans apart ~ there 1s no schoo! of musical thought known to Aristoxenus for whose members the label apuovixoi would have seemed inappropriate. 1 mught add two small pieces of indirect evidence. The word apyovixoi, used in reference to students of apuovext,, occurs in Theophrastus Fr. 89, where it Gistinguishes those who make important use of aigdnaxg from the naOnuacuxot, presumably Pythagorean, who do not; and though Theophrastus concedes that some people yurposes the important poi group. There are the apyovixoi and there are the it might be extracted from the famous passage at Republic $31a-c, ‘Though Plato does not use the word 4pyovixdc, there seems a pretty direct relation between his ypnotoi, desperately listening for minute differences in pitch, and Aristoxcnus’ apuovixol: there is even the verbal link between Aristoxenus’ katanvevoorg and Plato's descriptive phrase xuxvawat’ eva 6vopdtovtec. I stall return to this passage later: for the present my point is that once again - Plato’s own doctrine apart ~ only the two ‘schools’ are mentioned, these ‘empiricists’ and the Pythagoreans. I shall now move on to the remaining part of my programme, to see what can be Said about the methods and aims of these predecessors of Aristoxenus. T shi mention a number of issues, but [shall { 4s What it is ~ known as KataxOxvoat<, because Aristoxenus obviously considers it important, and partly because it gives us at least a toe-hold in something post ‘shard to build up much of a picture con the basis of a list of things which the apuovixoi did nor do, At its most straightforward, what xataxdxvweic seems to mvolve 1 construction of a diagram in the form of a line, with a series of marks at equal the boundaries of the smallest m \gram, in fact, represents a series of quarter-tones. On to this line n be mapped in a way which revealed the sizes of the component ‘my picture partly intervals: the scales could th sntervals.*® If Aristoxenus is t 'd, the purpose of this construction is to be connected with the fol ters, (®) The explanation of the natures of musical ofpata and weyéOn: that is, the analysis of the mtcrval-structures of the various scales, tne smaller components of which they are constructed, and the complex arrangements which can be formed by their conju jons between rOvor (‘modes’); HiEIe oF ‘mogulation’; and the appropriateness of particular kinds of scale to particular trot, or rang ‘Anistoxenus scems to say that the Katanbxwaatg diagrams could have been deal with these matters, but (hat the apovtKol ignored them or treated them only kota tyqV, in passing: this suggests that for the ApHovexot their real value Lay elsewhere (7.4-34), ‘THE PREDECESSORS OF ARISTOXENUS 9 Gi) The nature of +8 88}, musical continuity. Of this Aristoxenus complains that the Gpovixoi thought of their quarter-tone series as representing 0 tEiis; ‘whereas, he argues, no more than two quarter-tones can ever occur successively ima Proper musical sequence, and nence the phinciples determining which mn roperiy follow another must lie elsewhere (27.34-28.17,and'53.3-15)>"I shall have alittle more to say about this ‘We may note further, in a pr to have had rather general assoc structure of the enharmonic octave, and incompleteness and inaccuracy generally (2.7.28: ef. 6.1319, 32.29-3 35-38.5), (b) an excessive empiricism, which excluded the formulation of aitiat, explanations for the conclusions reached (6.13- 14, 32.29.30), and (¢) an emphasis on correct quantitative notation as an important aim of the science (39-41) ‘One might well wonder why Aristoxenus should have regarded the procedure 1 fhave described as more than harmless tive. There are, T think, quit 1m the present context ist interest or importance to its own feems strange to suppose that the construction ave been a central part of anyone’s programme for harmonic science. But I think that it can be shown that such appearances are deceptive, and that the development of the xutaxixvoots diagrams must have been both significant and difficu! Consider the circumstances, Before the fourth-century theorists began to work ‘on them, the scale-forms employed by Greek musicians 1n actual muste seem to have becn multifarious and chaotic. As far as scholars have been able to judge, different kinds of music may well have employed differently organised series of notes. but no one Nad sought or discovered any determinate principles by which they could be related and compared to one another. The characters of the different kinds may have been more or less recognisable, but there had been no systematic {tack on the question what it was that generated these different characters. Itis not, even clear that these differences were primari as differences mn mnterval- structure rather than e.g, relative height and depth of pit as during the fourth century that these distinctions were first. pinned down to differences in mnterval-structure, and these differences compared, organised, and eventuall fossilised, and itis in the context of the project of developing these comparisons that Karambevioats is, I believe, to be understood,”” ‘The investigators who began this work were hampered by the lack of any appropriate tools. There was of course no key-board, on which the relative sizes of there any no! system vals as the modern stave does. Such nas is known identifies gSyy0t not by pitch, but by Sévayic, thats, by the 10 A. DARKER, functional role performed by that note in the scale.” Aristoxenus himself argues for the view that the notes in the scale are to be considered! as Suvéuetc, restricted more oF less narrowly to a particular tdoxs or pitch by the nature of the relevant péhos, land against the tiesis which he ascribes to his predecessors that @66y/ot are to be simply identified as téec (see two extended passages, 39-41 and 46-50) to infer from what he say the view ‘given note in the scal natural note ofthat scale. The idea t them, between two notes of an accepted scal depends on the possibility of thinking of the a independently of given s inking m this Way 15, plainly a precondition of the quantitative comparison of the interval structures of the different accepted scales. | suggest, then, that this idea 1s not one which arises directly out of common musical practice, but one developed by Aristoxenus' jecessors as a tool of analysis. It 18 previous theorists and not practical ans Who are under attack in the passages cited above. itatively compared, next note up a given scale isthe same distance he quest tackled is how the relative sizes of the steps of the scale can prop Its here that the relevance of the xatamtxveocts di abstract schema on to which any scale, indeed any coll be plotted, and by means of which the sizes of their intervais can be compared: and it provides for the first ume the possibility of a quantitative notation, allowing us to write down unambiguously any hoard sequence of pitches. Aristoxenus, as we have seen, treats the view Uhat an accurate quantitative notation is the crucial aim of har contempt; but if my argument 1s near the truth his disdam 1s scarcely justifie ‘We can thus least guess at one major objective of those who employed the ‘must have been extremely

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