Augustine's "De musica"

Brennan, Brian

doi:10.2307/1584121

Cited by 27 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…It also has the advantage relative to some other methods of making no prior assumption about the structures that might be perceptually important. For instance, small-integer ratios in music have been widely discussed by Western scholars and musicians for centuries [96][97][98][99] , and it is natural to wonder whether this emphasis reflects intellectual biases rather than the nature of perception 100 . However, we found small-integer ratios to emerge from the data in each participant group.…”

Section: Relation To Prior Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Commonality and variation in mental representations of music revealed by a cross-cultural comparison of rhythm priors in 15 countries

Jacoby,

Polak,

Grahn

et al. 2024

Nat Hum Behav

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Music is present in every known society but varies from place to place. What, if anything, is universal to music cognition? We measured a signature of mental representations of rhythm in 39 participant groups in 15 countries, spanning urban societies and Indigenous populations. Listeners reproduced random ‘seed’ rhythms; their reproductions were fed back as the stimulus (as in the game of ‘telephone’), such that their biases (the prior) could be estimated from the distribution of reproductions. Every tested group showed a sparse prior with peaks at integer-ratio rhythms. However, the importance of different integer ratios varied across groups, often reflecting local musical practices. Our results suggest a common feature of music cognition: discrete rhythm ‘categories’ at small-integer ratios. These discrete representations plausibly stabilize musical systems in the face of cultural transmission but interact with culture-specific traditions to yield the diversity that is evident when mental representations are probed across many cultures.

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Section: Relation To Prior Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Commonality and variation in mental representations of music revealed by a cross-cultural comparison of rhythm priors in 15 countries

Jacoby,

Polak,

Grahn

et al. 2024

Nat Hum Behav

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“…In his writings De Musica as well as Confessions , Augustine (2009) analyzed the musical and theological structure of the hymn Deus Creator Omnium (Wiskus, 2016: 328). However, Augustine warned that pride could disrupt God’s plan and prevent appreciation of what was good in music (Brennan, 1988: 275). Augustine’s answer was to put the emotional power of music in service to the Word.…”

Section: Theologies Of Ecology Feminism and Musicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sonic Metaphors: Music, Sound, and Ecofeminist Theology

Ursic

2021

Feminist Theology

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This article explores the relationship between music and ecofeminist theology and investigates how music and sound can advance the development of ecofeminist thought. On a physical level, the act of breathing connects humankind with the earth’s atmosphere and the element of air produces music and sound. On a theological level, traditional church teachings about the power and danger of music have reflected similar warnings about women and nature. Ecofeminist theologian Sally McFague made a persuasive case for metaphorical theology that supported the arts being included in theological development. Religious Studies scholar Heidi Epstein engaged McFague’s metaphorical theology to develop a feminist theology of music and featured female composers including Hildegard of Bingen. I propose that metaphorical theology and music can also connect through the development of sonic metaphors. Sonic metaphors are created with pitch, rhythm, and sound. While most metaphors rely on the eyes to process written text and visual art, sonic metaphors are processed through the ears and offer different pathways for cognition. Sonic metaphors have been underutilized in theology and they offer potential for exploring theological concepts that can be challenging to comprehend through textual or visual means. These metaphors are particularly applicable for developing ecofeminist theology because sound and music can connect our bodies with nature in illuminating ways. I include examples from my own musical background, and I offer suggestions for non-musicians and ecofeminist theologians who want to incorporate sonic metaphors into their own creative theological reflection.

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“…In the fifteenth century, Franchinus Gaffurius, an Italian music theorist, cited Augustine's De musica in his Theorica Musicae, and it was through Gaffurius that De musica was transmitted to Andreas Ornithoparcus, in the sixteenth century (e.g., Micrologus) ( [16], p. 278).…”

Section: De Musica In Subsequent Christian Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In that class, students were assigned Brian Brennan's article, which summarized the entire De musica treatise and provided some cultural context [16]. In class, I passed out excerpts, mostly from Book VI, and we talked about the harmony Augustine perceived in all the created order, all the way from the human soul to the steady movement of the firmament.…”

Section: De Musica In the 21st Century Classroommentioning

confidence: 99%

Augustine’s De Musica in the 21st Century Music Classroom

MacInnis

2015

Religions

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Augustine's De musica is all that remains of his ambitious plan to write a cycle of works describing each of the liberal arts in terms of Christian faith and is actually unfinished; whereas the six books extant today primarily examine rhythm, Augustine intended to write about melody also. The sixth book of De musica was better known in late Antiquity and the Middle Ages than the first five, and it takes up philosophical questions of aesthetics related to the proportionate ordering discernable throughout creation. After a brief introduction summarizing De musica's content and its importance in subsequent Christian writings, my presentation outlines and explains how I have used this document in my own music classes. For example, my students learn that a vital notion in Augustine's writings, and in Neoplatonism more broadly, is the spiritual benefit of academic study. That is, through study of music, one gains insight into the created order, but, more importantly, one's soul is strengthened and trained to perceive higher realities of the cosmos such as the ordering of the planetary spheres and the progression of celestial hierarchies, which span the spiritual distance from God to humanity.

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Augustine's "De musica"

Cited by 27 publications

References 0 publications

Commonality and variation in mental representations of music revealed by a cross-cultural comparison of rhythm priors in 15 countries

Commonality and variation in mental representations of music revealed by a cross-cultural comparison of rhythm priors in 15 countries

Sonic Metaphors: Music, Sound, and Ecofeminist Theology

Augustine’s De Musica in the 21st Century Music Classroom

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