Music, Μουσικὴ, is the science of sounds, as they are capable of pleasantly affecting the ear, or the art of arranging and managing sounds in such a way that from their consonance, from their order, and from their relative durations, pleasant sensations are produced. [1]

It is commonly supposed that this word comes from musa, because it is believed that the muses invented this art; but Kircher, citing Diodorus, draws this name from an Egyptian word, claiming that it is in Egypt that Music began to be reestablished after the Flood, and that the original idea of it came from the sound made by the reeds that grow on the banks of the Nile, when the wind blew across their stalks.

Music is naturally divided into speculative and practical.

Speculative music is, if one may put it this way, the science of musical materials, that is, the different ratios from low to high, and from slow to fast, the perception of which is, according to several authors, the true source of aural pleasure.

Practical music is that which explains how the principles of speculative music can be applied; that is, to manage and organize sounds with respect to their sequence, consonance, and meter, in such a way that the sound is pleasing to the ear. This is what is called the art of composition. See Composition. With respect to the actual production of sounds by voices or instruments, that is called performance, this is the purely mechanical part that, supposing the ability to sound the intervals properly, requires no other understanding than how to read the notation of Music, and facility in expressing them.

Speculative music is divided into two parts; that is, the science of the relationship between sounds and of the measuring of intervals, and that of [note] values or of time.

The first is properly that which the ancients called harmonic music. It explains what harmony consists of, and reveals its foundations. It makes known the different means by which sounds affect the ear with respect to their intervals; something that applies equally to their consonance and order of appearance.

The second is called rhythmic because it deals with sounds with regard to their time and quantity. It includes the explanation of rhythms and of meters that are long and short, fast and slow, of beats and the different ways they can be divided, in order to apply the succession of sounds to them.

Practical music is divided into two parts which correspond to those above.

The one that corresponds to harmonic music, and that the ancients called melopoeia, contains rules for producing pleasant and harmonious songs. See Melopoeia.

The second, which corresponds to rhythmic music, and which is called rhythmopoeia , contains rules for applying meters and beats; in a word, for the practice of rhythm. See Rhythm.

Porphyry makes another division of Music as having both silent and sounding motion for its object, and without dividing it into speculative and practical, he finds the following six divisions: rhythmic, for the movements of the dance; metrical, for cadence and number; organic, for the playing of instruments; poetic , for harmony and the meter of verses; hypocritical, for the poses of pantomimes; and harmonic, for song.

Today, Music is divided more simply into melody and harmony ; because rhythm is, for us, a field too limited to make it an individual branch.

For melody, one manages the succession of sounds so as to produce pleasant songs. See Melody, Mode, Song, Modulation.

Harmony consists, strictly speaking, in knowing how to unite with each of the sounds in a regular and melodious succession, two or more other sounds that, striking the ear at the same time, pleasantly flatter the senses. See Harmony.

Ancient authors disagree very much over the nature, purpose, extent, and parts of Music. In general, they gave to this word a meaning much broader than what remains today. Under the name of music they included, as shall be shown, not just dance, song, [and] poetry; but also the collection of all the sciences. Hermes defined music [as] the science of the order of all things: that was also the doctrine of the school of Pythagoras, and that of Plato, who taught that everything in the universe was music. According to Hesychius, the Athenians gave the name music to all of the arts.

From this come all the sublime musics of which the philosophers tell us: divine music, the music of the world; celestial music ; human music ; active music ; contemplative music ; enunciative music, organic, odical, etc.

It is within these large ideas that one must understand several passages of the ancients on music , which are unintelligible using the meaning that we give today to this word.

It appears that Music was one of the first arts. It is also very probable that vocal music was discovered before instrumental. For, not only must men have made some observations of the different notes of their own voices, before having invented any instrument; but they must have learned early on, by the natural concordance of birds, to modify the voice and larynx in a pleasing manner. Neither was there much delay in forming a concept of wind instruments: Diodorus, as I have said, and several of the ancients attributed the invention of music to observing the whistling of the wind in the reeds or other stalks of plants. This is also the opinion of Lucretius.

With respect to other kinds of instruments, vibrating strings are so common that men must have observed very soon their different sounds: something that gave birth to string instruments. See String. [3]

As for instruments that one strikes to produce a sound, such as tambours and timbales, they owe their origin to the muffled noise that makes hollow bodies make when one strikes them. See Tambour, Timbales, etc .

It is difficult to get past these generalities to establish anything solid regarding the invention of Music reduced to an art. Several of the ancients attribute it to Mercury, as well as that of the lyre. Others would have it that the Greeks owed it to Cadmus, who in saving himself from the court of the king of Phoenicia ( Athen [ aeus ] Deipn [ osophistae ]) brought to Greece the musician Harmony. [4] In a passage in the dialogue of Plutarch on Music, Lysias says that it is Amphion who invented it; in another, Soterichus says that it is Apollo; in yet another, he appears to give the honor to Olympia. There is no agreement on all this; after these first inventions come Chiron, Demodocus, Hermes, [and] Orpheus, who, according to some, invented the lyre. After them came Phoecinius and Terpander, contemporaries of Lycurgus, who gave rules to Music. Some people attribute to him the invention of the first modes. Finally, one can add Thales and Thamiris, who are said to have been the inventors of purely instrumental Music. [5]

These great musicians lived before Homer. Other more modern ones are Lasus, Hermionensis, Melnippides, Philoxenus, Timotheus, Phrynnis, Epigonius, Lysander, Simicus, and Diodorus, who all developed music considerably.

Lasus is, it is claimed, the first who wrote about music in the era of Darius Hystaspes. Epigonius invented an instrument with forty strings called epigoneion. Simmicus also invented an instrument with thirty-nine strings, called simikion.

Diodorus perfected the flute by adding new holes to it; and Timotheus, the lyre, by adding a new string, something that caused him to be punished by the Lacedaemonians.

Just as the ancient writers expressed themselves very obscurely concerning the inventors of Musical instruments, they are also very obscure on the instruments themselves; we know nothing more than the names.

The instruments are divided generally into string instruments, wind instruments, and instruments that are struck. Among string instruments, there are those that the ancients called lyre, psaltērion, trigōnon, sambukē, kithara, pēktis, magadis, barbiton, testudo, trigōnon, epigoneion, simikion, epandoron, etc . All these instruments are played with the hand or with a plectrum, a sort of bow. See Lyre, etc.

Among wind instruments, there are those that the ancients called tibia, fistula, tuba, cornu, lituus, and the hydraulic organs. See Flute, etc.

The percussion instruments were called tympanum, cymbalum, orepitaculum, tintinnabulum, krotala, sistrum. See Tympanum, Timbales, etc.

Music was [held] in the highest esteem among the various peoples of antiquity, and principally among the Greeks, and this esteem was proportional to the power and to the surprising effects that they attributed to it. Their authors did not believe that they were exaggerating, in saying to us that [music] was used in heaven, and that it constituted the principal entertainment of the gods and souls of the blessed. Plato was not at all afraid to say that one could not make changes in Music that would not constitute a change in the state; and he claims that one can identify sounds capable of generating baseness of the soul, indolence, and the contrary virtues. Aristotle, who seems to have made it his policy to always oppose his views to those of Plato, is nevertheless in agreement with him concerning the power of Music on morals. The judicious Polybius tells us that Music was necessary to sweeten the morals of the Arcadians, who lived in a country where the air was sad and cold; that those of Cynetas who neglected Music surpassed the Greeks in cruelty, and that there is no city where one saw more crimes. Athenaeus assures us that in former times all the divine and human laws, all the exhortations to virtue, all the knowledge of what concerned gods and men, the lives and actions of illustrious persons, were written in verse and sung publicly by a chorus to the sound of instruments. No more efficacious method has been found to engrave on the spirit of men the principles of morality and the knowledge of their duty.

Music was part of the study of the ancient Pythagoreans; they used it to move the spirit to praiseworthy actions, and to fire themselves up with the love of virtue. According to these philosophers, our spirit was not really formed except by harmony, and they believed they could revive, by means of Music, the original harmony of the faculties of the soul; that is, the harmony that, according to them, existed in the soul before it animated our bodies, and while it existed in the heavens. See Preexistence, Pythagoreans. [6]

Music today appears to be deprived of that degree of power and majesty, to the point that it makes us doubt the truth of these facts, even though attested to by the most judicious historians and by the most sober philosophers of antiquity. However, one finds in modern history several similar facts. If Timotheus excited the madness of Alexander by the Phrygian mode and then calmed him to the point of indolence by the Lydian mode, a more modern music raised the stakes higher, it is said, by exciting in Eric king of Denmark such a madness that he killed his best servants; apparently these servants were not as sensitive to Music as their prince, or he would have run half the risk himself. D’Aubigné reports further another story that is similar to that of Timotheus. He says that in the time of Henry III, the musician Glaudin, [7] playing at the wedding of the duc de Joyeuse in the Phrygian mode, excited, not the king, but a courtier, who forgot himself so far as to take up weapons in the presence of his sovereign; but the musician made haste to calm him by shifting to the sub-Phrygian mode.

If our music does not exert its power over the affections of the soul, it is nevertheless capable of physically acting upon the body, as witnessed by the story of the tarantella, too well-known to be repeated here. See Tarantella. Witness the Gascon knight spoken of by Boyle, [8] who, at the sound of the bagpipes, could not retain his urine; to which must be added something that the same author recounts concerning women who broke into tears when they heard a certain mode [ ton ] that did not affect the rest of the listeners. One reads in the history of the Academy of Sciences in Paris, that a musician was cured of a violent fever by a concert that was performed in his room.

Sounds also act on inanimate bodies. Morhoff makes mention of a certain Dutchman Petter, who broke a glass with the sound of his voice. Kircher speaks of a large stone which shook at the sound of a certain pipe of an organ. Father Mersenne speaks also of a kind of pavement that organ-playing shook as much as an earthquake could have. Boyle adds that seats often tremble at the sound of organs; that he perceived them several times shaking under his hand at certain notes of the organ or the voice, and that he was told that all those that were well made vibrated at a particular note. This last experience is certain, and anyone can verify it at any time. Everyone has heard of the famous pillar in the church at Reims (Saint Nicaise) that vibrates noticeably at the sound of a certain bell, while the other pillars remain nearly immobile. But that which robs sound of the honor of being miraculous is that this pillar also vibrates when the clapper is removed from the bell.

All these examples, which pertain more to sound than to Music, and for which physics can give several explanations, do not make any more intelligible or believable to us the miraculous and almost divine effects that the ancients attributed to Music. Several authors torment themselves trying to find a reason. Wallis attributes them partly to the newness of the art, and partly rejects them as exaggeration by the ancients; others honor them only as poetry; others guess that the Greeks, more sensitive than us because of the constitution of their climate or their manner of living, were able to be moved by things that would not affect us at all. Mr. Burette himself, even in adopting all these facts, claims that they do not demonstrate the perfection of the Music that produced them; he does not see anything in them that bad village scrapers could not have done, according to him, as well as the first musicians of the world. Most of his sentiments are based on the disdain we have for ancient music . But is this disdain itself as well-established as we claim? It is something that has been investigated many times, and that could, given the obscurity of the subject matter and the insufficiency of the judges, perhaps need to be investigated again.

The nature of this work, and the few sources that we have on the music of the Greeks, prevent me, as well, from attempting this analysis. I will limit myself, concerning these explanations that our sources, so poorly informed concerning this ancient music, have given us, to compare it, in a few words, with ours.

To give ourselves an idea of the music of the ancients as briefly as possible, it must be considered in each of its parts: Systems , Genres , Modes , Rhythm , and Melopoeia . See each of these words.

The result of this analysis can be reduced to this:

1 ^o . That the great system of the Greeks, that is, the general range that they gave from low to high for all the notes [9] of their music, did not exceed by more than one note the range of three octaves. See the Greek tables that Meibonius put at the beginning of the work by Alypius.

2 ^o . That each of their three genres, and even each species of a genre, was composed of at least sixteen consecutive notes within the range of available pitches [l’étendue du diagramme]. That of these notes, the majority of them were fixed [notes] and were the same for all genres; but that the tuning of the others was variable and different in each individual genre, something that considerably increased the number of notes and intervals.

3 ^o . That there were at least seven principal modes or keys [based] on each of the seven notes of the diatonic system, which, besides their differences from low to high also received, each in its own modification, other differences which gave it its character.

4 ^o . That their rhythm or meter varied, not only according to the nature of the [metrical] feet of which the verses were composed, [and] not just according to the various mixtures of these same feet, but also according to the various syllabic beats, and according to all the degrees from fast to slow of which they were capable.

5 ^o . Finally, with respect to song or melopoeia, one can judge the variety that must have existed by the number of genres and the different modes that they assigned to them, according to the character of the poetry, and by the freedom to conjoin or divide in each genre the different tetrachords, as long as they fit the expression and character of the tune.

On the other hand, the few clues that we can bring together from various passages scattered here and there in writers on nature and the construction of their instruments, suffice to show how far they were from the perfection of our own. Their flutes had only a few holes, their lyres or kitharas had but few strings. When they had many of them, several of their strings were provided at the unison or octave, and besides, most of these instruments did not have fingerboards, [so] one could not draw more notes from them than there were strings. The form of their horns and trumpets suffice to show that they could not equal the beautiful sound of those of today: and in general, one must suppose that their orchestra was never noisy, to conceive how the kithara, the harp, and other similar instruments could have made themselves heard. Whether they struck the strings with a plectrum, as we do on our tympana, or they plucked them with the fingers, as Epigonius taught them, it is not well understood what effect this could have produced in their music, which so often took place out-of-doors. I do not know whether a hundred guitars in a theater such as that of Athens could have been heard very distinctly. In a word, it is very certain that only the organ, this admirable instrument, worthy because of its majesty of the use for which it was destined, absolutely erased everything that the ancients ever invented in this genre. All this must speak to the character of their music ; completely occupied with their divine poetry, they did think [of anything] except to express it well with vocal music ; they did not value instrumental music except to the extent that it enhanced the other kind; they did not tolerate it covering [vocal music], and doubtless they were far from the position that I see us approaching, which is to use vocal parts only to accompany the instruments.

It appears to have been demonstrated once again that they did not know polyphonic music , counterpoint, or, in a word, harmony in the sense that we give the term. If they used this word, it was only to express a pleasant succession of sounds. See on this subject the dissertations of Mr. Burette in the Mémoires de l’Académie des Belles-Lettres.

We therefore prevail over them from this perspective, and it is an important point, because it is certain that harmony is the true foundation of melody and of modulation. But are we not mistaken about this advantage? This is a doubt that one is very tempted to entertain when one hears our modern operas. Bah! This chaos, this confusion of parts, this multitude of different instruments, which seem to insult each other, this fracas of accompaniments that muffle the voice without supporting it; does all this thus make the true beauties of Music ? Is it from this that music draws its power and its energy? That would require that the most harmonious Music was at the same time the most touching. But the public has already learned the contrary. Let us consider the Italians, our contemporaries, whose music is the best, or rather the only good [music] in the universe, in the unanimous judgment of all people, except the French, who prefer their own. See what sobriety in consonances, what choice of harmony! These people do not measure by the number of parts the esteem which they have for a music; properly speaking, their operas have only duos, and all Europe admires and imitates them. It is certainly not by dint of multiplying the parts of their music that the French will arrive at making foreigners like it. Harmony is admirable if properly dispensed; it has charms to which all men are sensitive; but it must not absorb the melody, nor beautiful singing. The most beautiful chords in the world will never interest [us] like the touching and well-managed inflections of a beautiful voice; and whoever reflects impartially on what is most touching in beautiful music well performed will feel, as one could say, that the very empire of the heart belongs to melody.

Finally, we prevail [over the ancients] because of the general range of our system, which, not being limited to just four or five octaves, has henceforth no other limits than the caprice of musicians. I do not know, however, if we have much to congratulate ourselves on. Was it such a bad thing in ancient music to have only to furnish open and harmonious sounds taken in a good medium? The voices sang without forcing themselves, the instruments did not howl continuously upon the rack; the false and muffled sounds that are drawn from the high positions [on the violin or violoncello], the yelps of a voice that goes beyond its limits, are these created to move the heart? The ancient music could soften it by soothing the ears; the new, by flaying them, can do no more than astonish the mind.

We have, like the ancients, the diatonic and chromatic genres; we have even expanded the latter: but since our composers mix it and confuse it with the former, almost without choice or discernment, it has lost most of its energy, and makes but little effect. This will soon be a school essay that the grand masters disdain. As for the enharmonic, the tuning has made it vanish; and what would it benefit us to have it, if our ears are not sensitive to it, and our voices cannot perform it?

Notice, however, that the diversity of genres is not a real richness for our music ; for it is always the same keyboard instrument tuned in the same manner; it makes in all genres the same notes and the same intervals. We really only have twelve keys, all the others are just octave [transpositions]; and I do not even know if we win on the [issue] of range from low to high, or the Greeks win by diversity of tuning.

We have twelve keys: what am I saying? We have twenty-four modes. What riches beyond the Greeks, who never had more than fifteen, which were further reduced to seven by Ptolemy! But these modes each had an individual character; the degree from low to high was the least of their differences: the character of singing, the modification of the tetrachords, the location of the half-steps, all these distinguished them more than the position of their tonic. In this sense we only have two modes, and the Greeks were richer than us.

As for rhythm, if we wish to compare it to the meter of our music, all the advantage would appear to be on our side: for in comparison to the four different rhythms that they used, we have at least twelve kinds of meters. But if their four rhythms made in reality as many different genres, we cannot say as much of our twelve meters, which are really just modifications of duration of just two types of movement, that is, of two and three beats. It is not that our music could not have as many as that of the Greeks; but if one pays attention to the genius of the professors of this art, one easily sees that every means of perfecting Music , which has more need of it than we can imagine, is thus entirely impossible.

We add here a bit of song in sesquialtera time, that is, two unequal beats, the ratio of which is two to three; a meter that is certainly as good and as natural as several of the ones that are in use, but that composers never use, because their teachers never taught it. See the Music Plates. [10]

The great vice of our meter, which is perhaps a little that of the language, is that it has no relation to the words. The meter of our verses is one thing; that of our music is another that is completely different and often contrary. Since the prosody of the French language is not as sensitive [ sensible ] as that of the Greek tongue was, and since our composers, their heads filled only with sounds, do not bother themselves with anything else, there is no more relationship between their music and words, as regards number and meter, than there is as regards sense and expression. It is not that they do not know how make a connection to the words to calm or rest ; that they are not very attentive to expressing the word sky with high notes, the words earth or hell with low notes, to make melismas on lightning and thunder, to make a furious monster leap out with twenty leaps of the voice, and other similar puerile things. But to embrace the prescription of a work, to explain the situation of the soul rather than to play with the individual meaning of each word; to render the harmony of the verses, to imitate, in a word, all the charm of the poetry by means of an appropriate and relevant music, that is what they understand so little, that is what they require of their poets who make little verses that are chopped up, prosaic, irregular, without number, without harmony, studded with the little lyric words flow , fly , glory , murmur , echo , bird-song , on which they exhaust all their harmonic science; they even begin by writing their tunes, and later make the versifier adjust the words: Music governs, Poetry is the servant, and a servant so subordinated, that at the opera one does not perceive just what verses one hears.

Ancient music, always bound to Poetry, followed it step-by-step, by expressing exactly the number and meter, and tried only to give it more effect and majesty. What impression excellent poetry rendered thusly must have made on a sensitive listener? If simple declamation draws tears from us, what energy would all the charm of harmony add, when it embellishes it instead of snuffing it out! Why does the old music of Lully interest us so much? Why do all of his imitators remain so far behind him? It is because none of them understood as he did the art of drawing music from words; it is because his recitative is the one out of all of them that comes closest to the sound [ ton ] of nature and good declamation. But when we wished to examine it more closely, it receded even further. Let us not judge the effects of ancient music by those of our own, because ours offers us nothing like it.

The part of our music that corresponds to the melopoeia of the Greeks is the song or melody; and I do not know which shall prevail in this category; for if we have more intervals, they have more varied ones than we do, because of the diversity of genres. Further, modulation being uniform in all our keys, it is necessary that song be so as well; for the harmony that produces it has its prescribed paths, and these paths are everywhere the same. Thus the combinations of songs that this harmony encompasses can only be very good: also, all our songs proceed in the same way. In all the keys, in all the modes, always the same formulas, always the same endings; one sees no variety in this respect, neither for the genre nor for the character. Bah! You treat in the same way the tender, the graceful, the gay, the impetuous, the serious, the moderate? Your melody is the same for all of these genres, and you pride yourself in the perfection of your music ? What would the Greeks have said about this, who had modes, who had rules for all the characters, and who expressed them there at will? Can anyone tell me that we also express them? We try, at least; but to speak frankly, I do not see that the efforts of our composers have been greeted with success. However, and this is addressed particularly to French music, what means do we employ for this? One only, and it is tempo: one slows it down in serious tunes: one pushes it in gay tunes. Pick any tune you want; do you want it to be tender? Sing it slowly, breathe deeply, shriek. Do you want it gay? Sing it quickly, emphasizing the beat. Do you want it furious? Dash [through it] until you run out of breath. Mr. Jeliotte has made the flat and trivial airs of the Pont-neuf fashionable; he has done the same for tender and sentimental airs, by singing them slowly with taste for which he is known. On the other hand, I have seen a very tender musette by opera stars gradually become a jolly minuet. Such is the character of French music ; vary the tempi, you will make what you want of it, Fiet avis, et cum volet, arbor . [11] But the ancients also had this diversity of tempi, and they also had for all the characters, particular rules whose effects made themselves felt in melopoeia.

What do I want to conclude from all this? That ancient music was more perfect than ours? Not at all. I believe, on the contrary, that ours is without comparison more learned and more pleasant; but I believe that that of the Greeks was more expressive and more energetic. Ours conforms more closely to the nature of song: theirs is closer to declamation; theirs only sought to move the soul, and we want to please the ear. In a word, the very abuse that we make in our music comes only from its richness; and perhaps without the limitations that the imperfections of Greek music imposed, might it not have produced all the miraculous effects that are reported to us?

It having been fervently wished to see fragments of ancient music, Father Kircher and Mr. Burette have worked on this topic to satisfy the curiosity of the public. In our Music Plates may be found two pieces of Greek music translated into our notes by these authors. But who would be unjust enough to want to judge ancient music from such specimens? I suppose that they are faithful, but I hope that those who want to judge them are sufficiently knowledgeable about the spirit of the Greek language; [and] that they will nevertheless consider that an Italian is an incompetent judge of a French air, and that they will compare the times and places. In the same Plate, a Chinese tune has been added, taken from Father du Halde; and in another Plate, a Persian tune taken from the chevalier Chardin; and further, two songs of American savages, taken from Father Mersenne. One will find in all of these pieces a conformity of modulation with our music, which could cause some to admire the goodness and universality of our rules, and perhaps, for others, render suspect the fidelity or intelligence of those who have transcribed these airs.

The manner in which the ancients notated their music was established upon a very simple principle, which was the correspondence of the sounds expressed with the figures or what is really the same thing, by the letters of their alphabet. But instead of taking advantage of this idea to limit themselves to a small number of easy-to-grasp characters, they got lost in a multitude of different signs, with which they gratuitously complicated their music. Boethius chose in the Latin alphabet characters that corresponded to those of the Greeks; Gregory the Great perfected his method. In 1024 Guido of Arezzo, a Benedictine, introduced the use of the staff ( see Staff), on the lines of which he marked the notes in the form of points, designating by their position the raising or lowering of the voice. Kircher, however, claimed that this invention was known before Guido: he only invented the scale [gamme], and applied the names drawn from the hymn of Saint John the Baptist to the notes of the scale [échelle], which it still retains today. Finally, this man, born for Music, invented, it is said, various instruments called the polyplectra, the harpsichord, the spinet, etc. See Notes, Scale.

The signs used for Music received their final substantial augmentation in 1330, it is commonly thought. Jean Muria, or de Muris, or de Meurs, a doctor of Paris, or English, according to Gesner, invented at that time different shapes of notes that designated the duration or quantity, and that we call today whole notes, half notes , quarter notes, etc. See Meter, Note Values.

Lasus is, as we have said, the first who wrote on Music ; but his work is lost, as well as several other books of the Greeks and the Romans on the same subject. Aristoxenus, disciple of Aristotle, is the oldest writer we have on this science. After him comes Euclid, known by his elements of geometry. Aristides Quintilianus wrote after Cicero; Alypius came next; after him Gaudentius the philosopher, Nicomachus the Pythagorean, and Bacchius.

Marcus Meibomius gave us a good book about these seven Greek writers, with a translation into Latin and footnotes.

Plutarch wrote a dialogue on Music. Ptolemy, the famous mathematician, wrote in Greek the principles of harmony, at about the time of the emperor Antoninus Pius. This author stood in between the Pythagoreans and the Aristoxenians. A long time afterwards, Manuel Bryennius also write about this same subject.

Among the Latins, Boethius wrote during the time of Theodoric; and at about the same time, a certain Cassiodorus, Martianus, and Saint Augustine.

Among the moderns, we have Zarlino, Salinas, Nalgulio, Vincenzo Galileo, Doni, Kircher, Banchieri, Mersenne, Parran, Perrault, Wallis, Descartes, Holder, Mengoli, Malcolm, Burette, and finally the famous Mr. Rameau, whose writings are somewhat singular, in that they have made a great fortune without having been read by anybody.

We have even more recently the principles of acoustics by a geometer, that show us how far Geometry can go in good hands, with respect to the invention and solution of the most difficult theorems of speculative music. [12]

Notes

1. Translator’s note: the French terms air , chant , mesure , mouvement , son , and tems have been translated as, respectively, tune, song, meter, tempo, sound, and beat. The term ton has been translated as either note or key, depending on the context.

2. “But imitating the flowing voices of birds with the mouth was long in use before men could try with tuneful song to enchant the ear; and Zephyr’s whistling through hollow reeds first taught rustic men to blow through shepherd’s hollow pipes” (translation by John T. Scott).

3. The article “Corde” was apparently never written.

4. Rousseau changes “Harmony” to “Hermione ou Harmonie” in the Dictionnaire de musique version of this article.

5. For identifications of the persons mentioned in this paragraph and those that follow, see John T. Scott, The Collected Writings of Rousseau, vol. 7 (Hanover NH: University Press of New England, 1998), which contains a translation of the Dictionnaire version of this article .

6. The article title is Pythagoreanism.

7. Corrected to “Claudin” in the Dictionnaire.

8. Perhaps Cyrano de Bergerac?

9. In this passage, Rousseau used son to mean “note,” not “sound.”

10. The plate shows a melody in 5/4 meter.

11. Horace, Satires 3.2: “Fiet aper, modo avis, modo faxum, et cum volet, arbor” ([he will] become a bear, sometimes a bird, sometimes a stone, and sometimes a tree).

12. Perhaps a reference to d’Alembert’s Eléments de musique théoretique et pratique, a popularization of Rameau’s theories.