The Medieval Concept of Music Perception. Hearing, Calculating and Contemplating

Abstract

Seeking to indicate the most salient features of the medieval perception of music, we must first of all point to the close relationship between the sensual and intellectual elements. This relationship is most conspicuous in the term "harmonica" introduced in the Latin Middle Ages by Boethius and defined as follows: "harmonica is the faculty of perceiving through senses and the intellect the differences between high and low sounds". The same definition reveals another significant feature of the perception of music, namely, that the importance is attached not to individual sounds, but to the differences or relationships between them, that is to the intervals. Since - in accordance with the Pythagorean tradition, which was a major force in medieval music theory - the relationship between sounds can be expressed numerically, it may therefore be considered in terms of the relationship of two numbers, apart from actual sound and beyond physical time. The question arises whether this concept of music could influence the perception of a medieval listener. For instance, can listening to music be understood as a process which engages both cognitive powers and concerns reducing in some unspecified manner the data perceived and processed by the senses to abstract categories which can be conceived only by the intellect?.