Philosophy of Music in the Consolatio of Boethius

Abstract

WHEN Boethius first sketches his memorable classification of music, he promises to say more later about musica mundana and humana,' but he does not do so in De musica itself,2 and scholars have thought that he never returned to the subject at all.' What I would like to suggest now is that Boethius does take up the old interest again in his last and greatest work, De consolatione Philosophiae, but in a way quite different from that of De musica. When he makes the early promises, he implies that he will say more about world and human music in physical and mathematical terms, but when he fulfills them indirectly in the Consolatio, he does so ethically and metaphysically, which is, perhaps, how one might expect a philosopher awaiting death to use his rich store of knowledge. Boethius does more, however, than simply carry out his early promises. He permeates the Consolatio with ideas about music. Indeed, the work may be said to have a main theme that is musical and to embody a more complete philosophy of music than De musica itself. It offers another striking precedent, therefore, like the Somnium Scipionis and the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, for mediaeval poets such as Alan of Lille, Dante, Machaut, and Chaucer, to use ideas about music thematically in their own imaginative works, as scholars are recognizing more and more that they do.4 Thus the Consolatio is a major instance of the close relations among philosophy, music, and literature in late classical and mediaeval culture, but an instance that has been overlooked by scholars in all three disciplines.5 We will understand better what Boethius does in the Consolatio if we first look briefly at the main philosophic ideas about music in De musica and De arithmetica, and for this purpose we can reduce them to four heads: (1) the origin of music, (2) the definitions of music and the true musician, (3) the classification of music, and (4) the moral analysis of instrumental music. The origin of music, Boethius tells