Aristoxenus Redeemed in the Renaissance

Abstract

Of the Greek authors on music, Aristoxenus was the least read in the early Renaissance. Ptolemy, Aristides Quintilianus, Bacchius, pseudo Plutarch, Bryennius, and even the anonymi of Bellermann were translated into Latin in the fifteenth century. But Aristoxenus was not translated until the middle of the sixteenth century and received little attention from music theorists until the 1580s and -90s. There were several reasons for the delay in recognizing the importance of this pioneer of Greek harmonics. Manuscripts containing the Harmonic Elements were scarce in the fifteenth century, but they became quite plentiful in the sixteenth century, thanks to Greek scribes in Italy, such as Bartholomaeus de Zanettis and Ioannes Honorios, who produced numerous copies.1 A more important reason is that the most frequently read ancient author on music, Boethius, and authors influenced by him, such as Gaffurio, expressed a low opinion of Aristoxenus' approach to harmonic science, because they regarded music as a discipline subordinate to mathematics and defined the relations between pitches as numerical ratios, whereas Aristoxenus, although himself a mathematician, aimed to divorce the musical discipline from mathematical considerations.