The Principle of Music and Other Works of Boethius
Now we are going to talk about one more important work by Boethius, The Principles of Music. The ground for this work was also with mathematical character. But such vision of music did not coincide with the standpoints of modern science. Probably, the history of music in some ways connected to mathematic, but it is impossible to build the whole theory of music only in mathematic.
First of all, Boethius defined three main types of music, such as instrumental, human and cosmic. In such criterion of defining the music types mathematic played the role connected to harmonic rations. Such point of view was really significant for Greek as they strongly thought that our world is set with the harmonic rations. So, all this was connected to the cosmic type of music.
As for the human type of music it also could be regarded as the connection to the harmonic rations, but not in the frames of space, but in the frames of soul and body. Well, and the instrumental type of music covered all existed instruments for that period of time. The most popular were bells, lyres, and horns.
In the scheme of importance the instrumental types was less important as to the Boethius’ point and Greeks’ in general for good music performance needed more the human and cosmic types. But with time a lot of information of this work was lost, so now we are informed more or less with the beginning and the instrumental type of music. Unfortunately, we really have no opportunities to find more information about human music and cosmic music. It will be a great mystery for the centuries.
More works about the quadrivium were also lost in the time. In tenth century Pope Sylvester II stated that he had the opportunity to read eight works created by Boethius concerning the issues of astronomy. He put the information on paper but to our great regret his works were also destroyed.
In his works he was more connected to the Ptolemaic system then to Aristotle’s one. To his point of view the earth was the universe center and other space bodies were around it.
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