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Introduction
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INTRODUCTION DHESE SIX BOOKS On Music were begun, before Au- . . gustine's baptism, at Milan in 387 A.D., and finished . later in Africa, after the De magistro in 391.1 While they are, therefore, among the earliest work of his career, they are not the earliest, but follow the four philosophical dialogues of Cassiciacum. They also straddle the period of the De immortaLiate animae, the De quantitate animae and the De Libero arbitrio. They are, however, only one of a series of treatises on the liberal arts which Augustine started, but never finished. He speaks of finishing one on Grammar and of start- .ing one each on Dialectic, Rhetoric, Geometry, Arithmetic, and Philosophy.2 Treatises on Grammar, Rhetoric, and Dialectic which have come down to us under his name were not accepted as genuine by the Benedictines. Recent scholars accept the last one as being a draft of the original done probably by Augustine himself, and are doubtful about the first two.3 But if these six books On Music are only a fragment of a projected cycle on the liberal arts, they are, also, only a fragment of a larger treatise on music. They are, in the words of Augustine, 'only such as pertain to that part called Rhythm.'4 Much later, in writing to Bishop Memorius, he speaks of having written six books on Rhythm and of having I See Retractatiolles, 1.6,l I, Migne 33, and PortaIie, 'Augustin: in DTC. 2 Retract. 1.6. 3 See Marrou, St. Augustin et fa fin de la cultlire antique 576-578, for a discussion of the authenticity of De dialectica. 4 Retmct. 1.6. 153 154 SAINT AUGUSTINE intended to write six more on Melody (de melo).5 As we shall see, this intended part would have been a treatise onĀ· Harmonics. It is necessary, for the understanding of these books on Rhythm, to know what the ancients meant by music, by rhythm, and by melody. It is true St. Augustine tells us that, of these six books, the first five on rhythm and meter are trivial and childish,6 but this is a rhetorical statement to introduce to us to the more serious business of the sixth book on the hierarchy of numbers as constitutive of the soul, the universe, and the angels. In the same letter to Memorius, written about 408 or 409 A.D., he also distinguishes the first five books from the sixth, considering them much inferior, and sends him only the sixth. This has given Westphal the opportunity to indulge in irony, to agree with Augustine, and so to dismiss his treatment of rhythm and meter as something strange and foreign to the correct ancient theories.7 But Westphal, in his passion for everything Aristoxenian, did not always have good judgment; in another case, that of Aristides Quintilianus, he sacrificed a really excellent treatise on music, the only complete one to come down to us from the ancient world, as only a source of fragments of Aristoxenus. Schiifke, in a recent book,8 has tried to bring Aristides' work back to its proper place. It is usually dangerous procedure to ignore the technical details a thinker uses to test or suggest his general and more seductive theories. It is too easy to overlook the first five books and to concentrate on the sixth. It would seem neces5 Epist. lOl (Paris 1836). 6 On Music, 6.1. 7 R. Westphal, Fragmente und Lehrsiitze der Griechischen Rhythllliker (Leipzig 1861) 19. 8 R. Schafke, Aristeides Quintilianus von der Musik (Berlin-Schoneberg 1937) . [3.226.254.255] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 11:31 GMT) ON MUSIC 155 sary, rather, to place these five technical books in the general picture of the theory of ancient music, and to try and read from the Augustinian variations on the ancient themes the intentions of his mind and doctrine. As we have said, the only complete treatise on music to come down to us from the Greeks or Romans is that of Aristides Quintilianus, a Greek of probably the first part of the second century A.D.9 There are a good many treatises on harmonics, those written from the Pythagorean point of view such as the Harmonics of Nicomachus, of Ptolemy, and of Theo of Smyrna, and the Harmonics of Aristoxenus from a less directly mathematical viewpoint. The treatise of Aristides combines the two approaches. The Pythagorean harmonics starts from the fact that two strings of the same material...