SCHOLE (Jan 2012)
Theophrastus on Music
Abstract
The heir of Aristotle Theophrastus of Eresus (the head of Lyceum from 322 to c. 287 BCE) wrote voluminously on a great variety of subjects, including music. Unfortunately, not much survived intact, and for recovering his highly original approach to music we have to rely on a series of testimonies in later authors (fr. 714 ff. Fortenbaugh), and a relatively long extract from his treatise On Music, quoted by Porphyry in his Commentary to Ptolemy’s Harmonics. He seems to be especially concerned with educational and therapeutic value of music and, most importantly, while criticising standard Pythagorean, Platonic and Peripatetic mathematical harmonics as well as contemporary acoustical theories, have proposed a new qualitative approach to music, based on a re-evaluation of common empirical considerations and a very problematic (due to the lack of sufficient evidence) theory of the psychological nature of musical consciousness, and special power of music, manifested in the movement productive of melody which occurs in the human soul when it reveals itself in a melodic voice. The fragments of Theophrastus’ musical works, translated here into the Russian for the first time, are supplemented with other evidences, also quoted by Porphyry, such as the most important musical fragment of Archytas (fr. 1 DK), extracts from the Peripatetic De audibilibus, as well as quotes from such otherwise unknown musical writers as Panaetius, Heraclidus, and Aelianus, all on the subject of Pythagorean harmonics and acoustic theory.
