Quintilianus

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Aristides

When is Aristides Quintilianus?

The identity and floruit of Quintilianus are questionable but he lived sometime from the 1st century BC to the 4th century AD. We know this because Quintilianus references Marcus T ullius Cicero, who died in 43 BC, and Martianus Capella referenced Quintilianus sometime between 410-439 AD. centuries AD.

T. Mathiesen says he most likely lived in the in the late 3rd or early 4th

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Who is Aristides Quintilianus?

Greek, possibly from Antioch. Authored treatise De Musica, or On Music (Gr. Peri musiks) This work comprises of 75 chapters in three books. It was first printed in its entirety in Marcus Meibornius Antiq. Muiscae Auc Septem, 52. (late 17th century) music, except for Aristoxenus. De Musica contains everything from antiquity concerning

Thursday, October 6, 2011

De Musica is preserved in its complete form in 56 extant manuscripts; the earliest is from the end of the 12th century.

De Musica is neither a handbook (encheiridion) nor an introduction (an eisagg) on the technique or science of music. The treatise is a compendium of musical, philosophical, medical, grammatical, metrical and literary material woven together into a unified philosophical discourse soul and the universe.

where music provides the paradigm for the order of the

Thursday, October 6, 2011

The proem (preface) lays out the design of the treatise: Book I defines the science of music (mousik) and its parts (harmonics, rhythmics and metrics); the principles of organization of music and their application in composition. Book II provides an explication (analysis and development) of music's paideutic role; discusses ethical forces and pedagogical music.

applications of the aforementioned principles of organization of Book III provides an exegesis of number, the soul, and the order of the universe. The formal and final causes of the principles of organization of music in the Neo-Platonist cosmological view.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Book I
Reviews traditional definitions of music that follow Aristoxenus Elementa Harmonica and possibly Cleonides. He introduces harmonics, rhythm, and meter, which are further developed in terms of systems of seven categories: The study of harmonics defines the constructs of (1)note, (2)interval,

(3)scale, (4)genus, (5)topos, (6)modulation, and (7)melic composition; The study of rhythmics like wise defines seven constructs beginning with the chronus protus and closing with compositional considerations. Same with the study of meter, which begins by defining the phoneme. Dionysius of Halicarnassus's On Literary Composition. The latter two also have precedence in Hephaestion's Handbook and

Thursday, October 6, 2011

After the review, Quintilianus then offers his own definition: music is the

knowledge of the seemly in bodies and motions. A neoplatonist approach to epistemology, this definition unifies words (music as cognitive art), melody (seemly), rhythm (bodies), and gesture (motion); which also parallels the order of the treatise.

Music is assigned a specific application in each stage of mans life, therefore it is the only type of learning that extends through all matter and all time. Ratios-geezer). (Seductive-Initiation-child, Persuasive-Power-man, Revelation-Principles and Melody moves the soul; rhythm moves the body. As a man is divided into soul

and body, so is he also divided into a rational and irrational part. Philosophy is the teacher of our reason[rational self]; music is the teacher of our irrational self. Book 1 also introduces the various subclasses of music, each one of which is explored and interrelated in an ever more complex fashion as the treatise progresses.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Some notational diagrams are included, one (i.9) claims to preserve scales of the exceedingly ancient peoples 9which could possibly described in scholarly literature). means that these are the scales of Plato's Republic (as they are often Another diagram (i.11) illustrates the fifteen tonoi laid out akin to a wing, a description and pattern preserved in the parapteres in a number of Latin music treatises of the 9th to 11th centuries.In his carefully conjoins harmonics, rhythmics and metrics.

vocabulary and development of definitions, Aristides Quintilianus

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Aristides' world is like medieval diagrams of the macrocosm and

microcosm: man and the material elements stand at its center, while

human society and the cosmos are the outer rings. T complete this o the concentric circles.

schematic, one must imagine an intersecting grid super- imposed over This grid qualifies (where, when, which) and asserts homologies among various classes of phenomena: the four elements, properties of nature (that is, hot, cold, moist,dry),the passions, virtues, senses, seasons of the year, stages of life, times of day, vowels, gender,and the like. Phenomena are viewed as similar on the basis of time, place, order, thought and will be a model for Boethius' and his notion of the and musica instrumentalis.

quality, or attributes.The concentric design is common place in ancient threefold harmony of the universe: musica mundana, musica humana,

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Book 2
Rowell asserts the most valuable material is contained in the posing five questions: ethicopedagogical discussions of Book II, in which Aristides begins by (1)can music teach or not? (2)can it do so usefully or not?

(3) can it teach all men or only some? types?

(4) can only a single type of melic composition teach or can many different (5) is there no use at all for things rejected as useless in education, or might some of these be beneficial in another way? psyche (soul). Book II sets out to address these questions and by first analyzing the

Thursday, October 6, 2011

First it discusses the dichotomies and trichotomies*: mind/body, rational/irrational, active/passive, male/"medial"/female. This is followed by an account of the process of paideia, an important and, according to Rowell amore useful translation than typical "education."

term that Mathiesen defines as "cultural development"-a much broader

Paideia seeks to produce accord with the seemly: mental assent to seemly "notions"and physical assent to the seemly by means of music teaching and therapy. sympathetic motions. Aristides emphasizes the similarities between

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Ethical education is divided into two branches: (1) the therapeutic(corrective)and (2) the opheletic(beneficial), Book II then proceeds to give examples of the seemly in each of the four main categories-notion, diction,melody, and rhythm Quintilianus asserts relationships among similar qualities: in diction, for example, the vowels of Greek are classified according to gender, active/passive properties, and the properties of nature, and are then related to the various notes, intervals,scales, and melodic types (11:14).

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Musical instruments are catalogued according to shape, mode of and active/ passive status.

activation, proper region of the cosmos, natural properties,g ender, This passage affords a fascinating glimpse into the deep stratum of myth that subtly informs our attitudes toward string and wind instruments and affects such things as the nature of the instrumental repertoires and the personalities of those who are disposed to take up the various instruments. It is clear that no account of any of the branches of ancient Greek of gender.

thought can afford to ignore the pro-found influence of the concept The doctrine of harmony was as much a balance of sexual identities and tensions as it was of ratios, elements, humors, and planetary orbits.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Book 3
The third book of the treatise is devoted to the two subclasses of music that remain unexplored: the arithmetic and the natural. These are now related to all the others, revealing music as a paradigm for cosmic order. The review of the traditional mathematical-musical affinities is probably drawn from Plutarch (On the Generation of the

Soul in the Timaeus), Porphyry's commentary on Ptolemy's Harmonics and Theon of Smyrna (Exposition of Mathematics Useful for Reading Plato), Aristides Quintilianus expands it with material that may have been

derived from Plotinus, Galen, Pliny (Natural History) and perhaps

Plato (Phaedrus, Republic and Laws) and Aristotle (Physiognomics).

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Relationship between philosophy and music is clarified. Philosophy allows one to cultivate the reason, and music provides the preliminary taming of our irrational nature, but full knowledge comes only by means of revelation and the mysteries(pp. 205-206). contemplation of unseen truth made vivid by ritual initiation into the What Aristotle could not see, because for him it wasnt real. the epistemological goal of the book...?

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Philosophy is a perfecting of every knowledge Music is preparatory to paideia. Philosophy is precise because it is an accomplishment that, through calling things to mind, makes up in full what was shed by the souls through circumstances in the course of creation.

Music is an initiation into the Mysteries and an agreeable preliminary brought to perfection in philosophy; transmits the extremes.

sacrifice that presents a little something and gives a foretaste of things Music transmits the beginnings of every kind of learning, philosophy

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Sources
Aristides Quintilianus. Peri mousikes.English On music, in three

books. Translation with introduction, commentary, and annotations by

Thomas J. Mathiesen. New Haven; London. Yale University Press, 1983. Lewis Rowell. Review. In Journal of Music Theory 28/2 (Autumn, 1984) pp. 302-312. Duke University Press on behalf of the Yale stable/843537 University Department of Music Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/

Thursday, October 6, 2011