Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- Part I PRELIMINARIES
- Part II EMPIRICAL HARMONICS
- Chapter 2 Empirical harmonics before Aristoxenus
- Chapter 3 The early empiricists in their cultural and intellectual contexts
- Chapter 4 Interlude on Aristotle's account of a science and its methods
- Chapter 5 Aristoxenus: the composition of the Elementa harmonica
- Chapter 6 Aristoxenus: concepts and methods in Elementa harmonica Book i
- Chapter 7 Elementa harmonica Books II–III: the science reconsidered
- Chapter 8 Elementa harmonica Book iii and its missing sequel
- Chapter 9 Contexts and purposes of Aristoxenus' harmonics
- Part III MATHEMATICAL HARMONICS
- Postscript: the later centuries
- Bibliography
- Index of proper names
- General index
Chapter 6 - Aristoxenus: concepts and methods in Elementa harmonica Book i
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- Part I PRELIMINARIES
- Part II EMPIRICAL HARMONICS
- Chapter 2 Empirical harmonics before Aristoxenus
- Chapter 3 The early empiricists in their cultural and intellectual contexts
- Chapter 4 Interlude on Aristotle's account of a science and its methods
- Chapter 5 Aristoxenus: the composition of the Elementa harmonica
- Chapter 6 Aristoxenus: concepts and methods in Elementa harmonica Book i
- Chapter 7 Elementa harmonica Books II–III: the science reconsidered
- Chapter 8 Elementa harmonica Book iii and its missing sequel
- Chapter 9 Contexts and purposes of Aristoxenus' harmonics
- Part III MATHEMATICAL HARMONICS
- Postscript: the later centuries
- Bibliography
- Index of proper names
- General index
Summary
In his personal life, for all we know, Aristoxenus may have been a charming companion, generous and open-hearted with his friends, modest among his intellectual peers, unfailingly gentle with animals and kind to children and old ladies; but this is not the persona he constructs for himself in the Elementa harmonica. He mentions earlier exponents of the science repeatedly, but always to criticise them and often to dismiss them with contempt. Their main function in his writings is to point up, by contrast, his own immeasurable superiority. His references to discussions he has had with his students or other contemporaries are invariably patronising or bad-tempered or both, and display nothing but their errors and confusions, from which, so his remarks suggest, only he is immune. He is the solitary master of the field of harmonic science, surrounded by ignorant incompetents whose existence he will acknowledge only to expose their follies. One may hope, without much confidence, that he was not really as arrogant as he seems. But a serious point emerges from his unattractive self-presentation. Very few of his withering outbursts are concerned with points of musicological detail.
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- The Science of Harmonics in Classical Greece , pp. 136 - 164Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007