De musica (Augustine of Hippo)

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De musica is a script that Augustine of Hippo wrote after his baptism around 389 AD in Tagaste on various aspects of music in Latin .

Objective and sources

In his early work De Ordine , Augustine sets up a catalog of areas of knowledge (Latin disciplina ) that enable people to reason and which are important for understanding and living Christian teaching . Such a catalog is already available in a similar form from Marcus Terentius Varro , but also from other ancient writers. Augustine now relates it to Christian education. From these disciplinae - as he later wrote - he completed the grammar and part of the music, the others only started. Only the De musica font has survived.

The work is divided into six books, the last of which has a special position. Books 1–5 are at home in the ancient world, poetry quotations are chosen by Roman authors such as Horace and Virgil , the musical definitions are similar to those of Censorinus and Aristeides Quintilianus , even if this author writing in Greek is not a direct source. In book 6, however, Augustine qualifies his previous books as childishments ( puerilia ) and develops new ideas in which he connects music with philosophy, metaphysics, even the perfect beauty of God. The examples are taken exclusively from the Christian area.

The six books

The books are designed as a teacher-student dialogue. Only in Book VI do the teacher's statements predominate. Facts are worked out in the lively back and forth of question, answer and question related to it again.

Book I.

In Book I, the definition of music as a science is first set against the singing of the nightingale, but also against the artistry of stage performers ( cantores theatricos ), who are regarded as less valuable. Augustine would like to trace the rhythm back to the arithmology and the beauty of the numbers, so he develops some knowledge of arithmetic, such as the definition of the even and odd numbers and several infinite series of numbers. The explanations about the sequence of numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 - the Tetraktys - are Pythagorean ideas. If one compares his statements with several textbooks from the Roman imperial period, such as that of Nicomachus of Gerasa , only the most basic and simplest is presented.

Book II to V

These books contain the author's technical statements on the rhythmic sub-area of ​​music. Augustine first differentiates between grammar and music and postulates that music should be considered rationally, while grammar follows tradition (Book II, Chapter 1). In music and grammar, he gives the smallest unit, the syllable ( syllaba ) , the pair of properties short-long . He is in contrast to the Hellenistic music theorists such as Aristeides Quintilianus but also to the contemporary Martianus Capella , who speaks of elevation-lowering ( arsin et thesin ) in music . A few times, however, he uses the pair of terms surcharge-precipitation ( levatio-positio ) (Book II, Chapter 10). The syllables are put together at feet ( pedes ) and 28 feet are adopted from the two-stage Pyrrhichius to the eight-stage Dispondeus from Hellenistic music theory and grammar (Book II, Chapter 8)

At the beginning of Book III, Augustine writes that rhythm is a branch of music. A little later, however, he defines the rhythm as a sequence of certain feet, the meter as a sequence of certain feet with a certain limitation and the verse as a meter in a certain structure (Book III, Chapters 1, 2), so that every verse has a meter and every meter is a rhythm, but not the other way around. With this, Augustine leaves the field of music and deals with the artistic composition of language. The pause plays an important role here: certum atque dimensum intervalli silentium - the certain measured pause of the missing space (Book III, Chapter 8).

Using many examples from ancient poets, Augustine explains in books II to V the rules for connecting different rhythms and meters. In particular, the beginning of the Aeneid arma virumque cano ... is used again and again. On the whole, Augustine does not write a complete treatise on rhythm (in music), but relies on the knowledge of metrics that he currently has from his earlier occupation as a grammarian and orator. He was able to find a similar demarcation between rhythm and metrics in the Roman grammarian Quintilian , as well as the names and descriptions of feet and laws for mixing different feet and meters.

Book VI

Book VI goes beyond the form and requirements of a specialist book. Rather, it is a philosophical, even religious, treatise. Possibly the reason for this is that Augustine was the only one who revised this book in the years 408 to 409 and at that time had acquired a different basic attitude.

From chapter 2 to chapter 9 Augustine defines 5 genres ( genera ) in connection with music: sound, sense of hearing, act of performing, memory, judgment of the listener. Their description leads to fundamental and new discoveries in music psychology. In his ideas of the soul that makes this music reception (Book VI, Chapter 5), Neoplatonic ideas also flow into it .

In the last chapters Augustine combines the art of music with theological themes. Among other things, it deals with the four virtues, the overcoming of temporal things, pride as the main sin, the meaning of suffering and sin.

Tradition and survival

The De musica treatise was widespread in the Middle Ages. 34 manuscripts have survived, including the Bibl. Cap. The oldest from the 9th century . 52 in Ivrea. Only the third expanded edition of the first Augustine print, published in 1491 by Dionysiua Bertochus in Venice, contained the script. Cassiodorus refers in his Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum to the work of Augustine, but does not use it in terms of content. The definition in book 1, musica est scientia bene modulandi ( music is the knowledge of the right design ), was used and modified by numerous authors throughout the Middle Ages, initially in Latin and later in various national languages. Although Augustine is not the author of this definition, his name and authority were connected with it.

Books 2 to 5 were hardly received in the Middle Ages. It was not until the 16th century that they formed a source for the book De musica des Francisco de Salinas. The first translation into German by Carl Johann Perl was not published until 1937 .

Text editions and translations

  • Carl Johann Perl: Aurelius Augustinus - MUSIC. Heitz & Cie, Strasbourg et al. 1937 (later editions in the German Augustinus edition , Schöningh, Paderborn).
  • Aurelius Augustinus: De musica: Books I and VI. From aesthetic judgment to metaphysical knowledge (Latin - German). Introduced, translated and annotated by Frank Hentschel. Meiner, Hamburg 2002.

literature

  • Heinz Edelstein: Augustine's view of music based on his writing “De musica”. Bonn 1929.
  • Beat A. Föllmi: The continued effect of Augustine's view of music in the 16th century . Peter Lang, Bern et al. 1994, ISBN 3-906752-54-2 .
  • Adalbert Keller: Aurelius Augustinus and music . Wuerzburg 1993.
  • Henri-Irénée Marrou : Augustine and the end of ancient education . Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 1981, ISBN 3-506-75340-1 .
  • Christoph Riedweg: Pythagoras . Munich 2002.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Adalbert Keller: Aurelius Augustinus and the music . Würzburg 1993, p. 149 ff.
  2. ^ Augustine of Hippo, De Ordine 2, XXXV – XLIV.
  3. ^ Augustine of Hippo, Retractationes I, 6.
  4. ^ Henri-Irénée Marrou : Augustine and the end of ancient education . Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 1981, ISBN 3-506-75340-1 , p. 250.
  5. ^ Henri-Irénée Marrou : Augustine and the end of ancient education . Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 1981, ISBN 3-506-75340-1 , p. 223.
  6. ↑ Christoph Riedweg: Pythagoras . Munich 2002, p. 110 ff.
  7. ^ Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii IX, 969.
  8. ^ Henri-Irénée Marrou : Augustine and the end of ancient education . Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 1981, ISBN 3-506-75340-1 , p. 234.
  9. ↑ Quintilianus, De institutione oratoria 9, IV, 50 ff.
  10. ^ Henri-Irénée Marrou : Augustine and the end of ancient education . Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 1981, ISBN 3-506-75340-1 , p. 489 f.
  11. ^ Carl Johann Perl: Aurelius Augustinus - MUSIC. Heitz & Cie, Strasbourg et al. 1937, notes, p. 297.
  12. ↑ Heinz Edelstein: Augustine's view of music based on his work “De musica”. Bonn 1929, p. 96 f.
  13. ^ Carl Johann Perl: Aurelius Augustinus - MUSIC. Heitz & Cie, Strasbourg et al. 1937, notes, p. 302 f.
  14. ↑ Beat A. Föllmi: The continued effect of Augustine's view of music in the 16th century . Peter Lang, Bern et al. 1994, ISBN 3-906752-54-2 , p. 54 f.
  15. ↑ Beat A. Föllmi: The continued effect of Augustine's view of music in the 16th century . Peter Lang, Bern et al. 1994, ISBN 3-906752-54-2 , p. 64 ff.
  16. ↑ Beat A. Föllmi: The continued effect of Augustine's view of music in the 16th century . Peter Lang, Bern et al. 1994, ISBN 3-906752-54-2 , p. 87.