The title of this article may appear provocative for two reasons. First, how can one possibly discuss ‘aesthetics’ in the Middle Ages since (as has often been remarked) there was no such thing. Surely the answer depends on the definition of the term ‘aesthetics’. In the Middle Ages, most discussions about beauty (pulchritudo) were placed in metaphysical contexts that cannot be interpreted with regard to art, either in the modern sense or in the medieval sense of ars.Footnote 1 This, however, does not mean that medieval authors did not ask questions such as ‘Which consonance sounds good?’ or ‘Does a certain device contribute to the beauty of a piece of music?’ In this article, such questions and others concerning the sensual quality of sound and the experience of listening shall be called ‘aesthetical’. These questions are rarely dealt with in the foreground of the texts to be considered here, but the evidence that is found reveals a far-reaching consciousness of aesthetical questions.
Second, on what grounds may it be asserted that medieval music aesthetics was sensuous? This question will be our central concern. One still encounters the notion (or prejudice) that medieval music theory was opposed to sensual perception, that it blended aesthetical aspects with mathematical and theological ideas and did not match musical practice. Certainly such a view would not be characteristic of recent specialist scholarship, but it has not been replaced by a new way of understanding how medieval authors approached aesthetical questions. Thus old stereotypes are still common, particularly in popular texts. A prominent example is Umberto Eco's Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, a revised version of which was published in 1987.Footnote 2
Particularly in writings for non-specialists, a supposed medieval music aesthetics has been constructed that never really existed. It is based on readings of the texts that only by mistake can be taken as evidence for aesthetical thought. The result is a strange, even bizarre, music aesthetics that defined mathematical ratios as the substance of music. At the root of such an interpretation lies a category mistake: evidence that does not belong to aesthetical thought has been read as if conveying a music aesthetics. The impression of difference, otherness, or strangeness is the outcome of such an anachronistic perspective. Statements are related to aesthetical experience where such a relationship did not exist, while evidence that sheds light upon aesthetical thought is rendered marginal. As we shall see, if the perspective is shifted, medieval music aesthetics loses its apparent strangeness and the significance of the seemingly marginal evidence becomes intelligible.
With regard to late medieval and early modern times, Rob C. Wegman has drawn attention to listening practices and also their sensual aspects.Footnote 3 Yet much more research must be conducted so that a richer idea of medieval approaches to musical pleasure and listening can be developed. I shall treat writings by three authors that demonstrate how medieval music theory actually relates to aesthetical practice and thought.
This article thus aims at a particular interpretation of medieval music theory. It does not consider theological treatises, literary works, or iconographical documents, as useful and revealing as they may be concerning the medieval musical experience.Footnote 4 My goal is to demonstrate that no contradiction exists between such sources and treatises on music theory and that these treatises do not exclude a sensuous approach to music.Footnote 5 By attempting to reconstruct the original meanings behind music theory treatises, evidence from other sources and disciplines, even from between the lines, may come to be considered aesthetical statements in their own right.
Augustine
At first glance, one would probably not expect anyone to choose Augustine of Hippo (354–430) to point out the sensuous aspect of music theory. Indeed, Augustine offered some judgements that apparently confirm the prejudices just mentioned. He evidently disapproved of sensual qualities in music in two respects: first, in the direct aesthetical sense that ‘the Beautiful pleases through number’, and second, in the moral sense that one should avoid sensuous pleasure. Augustine could not be clearer, or so it would seem. The formulation ‘the Beautiful pleases through number’, in fact, is a literal translation from his De musica: ‘pulchra numero placent’.Footnote 6 As to the moral aspect, Augustine emphatically asked: ‘What, then, is easy? To love colours, voices and cake, roses and soft bodies?’Footnote 7 Here Augustine compares the love of God with the sensuous love of corporeal things. I will deal with both statements separately.
‘The Beautiful pleases through number’
In De musica, Augustine investigates rhythm. To understand the assertion ‘the Beautiful pleases through number’, some basic ideas of Augustine's theory of rhythm must be considered. Augustine asks why everybody seems to like some rhythms but not others, and he observes that rhythms people like are bound to a certain equality. Rhythms are, so to speak, extensions of equality, that is, of the fundamental relationship of rhythmic durations, namely the repetition of a rhythmic unit. Essentially this means that rhythms are pleasing insofar as they can be reduced to equality. Augustine concludes that equality is essential for rhythm and its perception.Footnote 8
Since rhythms are composed of countable units, they can readily be expressed by numbers. A rhythm consisting of two equal entities, for example, can be expressed by the ratio 1:1; a rhythm comprising two entities wherein the first lasts twice as long as the second can be expressed by the ratio 2:1, and so on. When declaring that ‘the Beautiful pleases through number’, Augustine is referring to that insight. This interpretation in itself would suffice to conclude that the assertion that Augustine wrote about mathematics rather than aesthetics misses the point. Put simply, Augustine's theory can be applied to almost any music, even that of today. (Such music adheres to regular metres and pleases through rhythms in those metres. Therefore it pleases through number. Expressions such as ‘four-four time’ make this evident.) Augustine was attempting to understand the aesthetical effect of rhythm and at no point did he so much as suggest that a listener was meant to analyse rhythm in terms of number when he or she is listening to music. Yet this analytic misunderstanding has very deep roots.
a) The summary of Augustine's theory of rhythm presented so far does not take into account the intention behind his text. No doubt Augustine was moved by music and we will return to that shortly, but his fondness for music, though decisive, did not motivate him to write De musica. Rather, Augustine was looking for a subject suitable for introducing young or less educated readers to a more complicated philosophical matter: convincing readers of neoplatonic metaphysics (mingled with Christian doctrine).Footnote 9 And if Augustine could demonstrate that experiences with which most people are well acquainted can be traced back to purely immaterial grounds, an important step would have been taken.Footnote 10
Augustine develops the following argument: analysis of our perception of beauty represented by rhythm leads to numerical ratios that are ultimately rooted in equality. However, equality does not exist in actual sense perception. The problem is well known from geometry: a perfect circle exists exclusively as an idea; it does not exist materially since any material representation of a circle will, strictly speaking, be uneven. The same is true with equality.Footnote 11 So the question is: how can equality rule our aesthetical experience if we cannot know it, because it has never occurred in our empirical reality?Footnote 12 The answer is that it must exist outside the sensually perceptible world, and that there must be an innate ability of human beings to recognise it.Footnote 13 In principle, this argument was known from Plato; Aristotle saw the problem, but proposed a different solution.Footnote 14 Nevertheless, Augustine's version of the argument is remarkable for its clarity and simplicity.
Augustine often emphasised the goal of his De musica – and other texts – with the words: ‘to proceed from the corporeal to the incorporeal’.Footnote 15 With that goal in mind, it should come as no surprise that Augustine figured out an aspect of the aesthetical experience that permitted such a way of argument. De musica is not a text on aesthetics but a book on metaphysics using an aesthetical example for reasons of comprehensibility and pedagogical strategy.Footnote 16 Augustine proceeds even further by demonstrating not only the existence of Platonic ideas but also the existence of God, deducing a proof from his rhythmical observations. He argues that since we have an idea of equality without ever having encountered it in real life, there must be a God who furnished us with that idea.Footnote 17
The point here is that Augustine had these conclusions in mind while writing De musica. He never aimed at fully explaining music aesthetics, but rather used it to demonstrate something that went far beyond musical interests. This is why one cannot reasonably conclude that music meant only arithmetical, metaphysical or even theological speculation for Augustine. He did, however, use a certain aspect of aesthetical experience to demonstrate something very different. Yet it is not music itself that has anagogical elements but rather the science of music – a theoretical reflection, not an aesthetical one. Moreover, as far as we can deduce from his Confessions, Augustine did not think of these things when he was listening to music, as will become evident later.
b) This much can be said definitely of the apparently over-rational aesthetics of Augustine. Moving onto shakier ground one may go a step further. The interpretation of ‘the Beautiful pleases through number’ is difficult in another respect. The sentence makes perfect sense in the pedagogically motivated context of De musica, and it tempts the reader to understand it in a rather general way, but this might be a misinterpretation. The general meaning would suggest that beauty pleases only through number. The sentence then implies a certain reversibility: whatever is not founded in number does not please aesthetically.
In De ordine, however, written shortly before De musica, Augustine makes an intriguing and relevant observation. He unfolds his pedagogical concept of the liberal arts and asks which subjects were apt for the education he envisioned.Footnote 18 Discussing some sensual objects to this end, he differentiates between aspects that are rational and those that are not. He wrote:
Neither do we usually name rational what calls our attention to colours, nor do we do so with regard to the sweetness of the ears, i.e. when a string is struck and it sounds, so to say, smooth and pure. It remains to admit that in the enjoyment of those sensations [only] that belongs to reason where a certain dimension or measurement can be found.Footnote 19
That is to say, elements of music such as timbre – in this case, liquiditas and puritas (however these words might be translated) – are not rational. Only elements that possess a certain dimensio or modulatio, that is, those subject of measurement, pertain to the rational aspect of sensual perception. Augustine's vocabulary is well chosen: the word dimensio relates to metior; mensura and modulatio relate to modus, which also means ‘measurement’. The definition of musica as ‘scientia bene modulandi’Footnote 20 takes up the same idea, thereby emphasising measurement and rationality. When Augustine wrote that ‘the Beautiful pleases through number’, he was referring to a special kind of beautiful objects (haec … pulchra), namely rhythmical beauty which can be counted.
Understood in the context of De ordine, the science of music concentrates on measurable elements, excluding the others. This does not mean that the other elements do not exist or are of minor importance aesthetically. Augustine's work on music simply excludes certain aesthetical aspects because they are not rational. He was well aware of other elements of aesthetical relevance, but he chose not to investigate them because they did not fit his goal and intention, and because they were not suitable for rational, that is, scientific, research. This is why one must not read his De musica as an aesthetical text, although it may be read as revealing a considerable amount about his aesthetical ideas.
The way in which Augustine develops the subject of musica as a liberal art in the sense described in De ordine, therefore, makes perfect sense. He introduces the subject of musica starting with poetry. If one first abstracts the meaning of the words, then abstracts the sound of the letters, that which remains deserves investigation in itself. This is rhythm, and it is music theory (musica) which examines it.Footnote 21 Augustine abstracts meaning and letter sounds because these depend on conventions and are thus subject to arbitrary change. Whether, he explains, you pronounce the ‘a’ in Italia long or short is not a matter of science, since science deals with truth that is neither dependent on convention nor subject to change.Footnote 22 For similar reasons, he excludes timbre from music theory because it cannot be dealt with rationally and he does not comment on it further.
In light of this observation, another aspect in De musica becomes more understandable, for there seems to be an inherent, unaddressed problem in Augustine's theory: if the ideal of beauty is equality, then the mere repetition of a single duration would best represent it in sound, although the result would aesthetically be unattractive. Beauty necessarily presupposes deviation from equality. Indeed, the aesthetical principle of variation was well known in antiquity, and in remote passages Augustine implies the idea of variation even though he does not deal with the topic explicitly.Footnote 23 Since the human inclination to variation cannot be explained by numbers,Footnote 24 Augustine would likely have grouped it with other features that do not fall under the subject of music as he developed it. Yet to conclude that this was not evident to Augustine would miss the point, and to further conclude that it had no place in his aesthetics would be false since there are no aesthetics in that sense. I suspect the point was too obvious to Augustine (as the quotation from De ordine suggests) and it would not have made sense for him to discuss it in a pedagogical and philosophical context. Needless to say, Augustine's definition of the science of music – ‘Musica est scientia bene modulandi’ – cannot be translated as ‘teaching of good composition or music making’.Footnote 25 It refers only to the rational and mathematical, that is, scientific, aspect of rhythmical structures that Augustine had singled out as being useful for his metaphysical and pedagogical concept.
Later, in book six of De musica, Augustine appears to contradict his earlier statement from De ordine.Footnote 26 He asserts: ‘In the entire field of sensual perception there is nothing that does not please us by way of equality or sameness.’Footnote 27 This sentence is ambiguous and may either mean that any pleasure we receive in the field of sensual perception results from equality (more likely from a grammatical perspective), or that in the field of sensual perception equality always pleases. If we take it in the latter, weaker sense it does not change a thing. If, however, we take it in the stronger sense, the reversibility of the assertion quoted above – ‘haec … pulchra numero placent’ – would follow. This reading is supported by the fact that Augustine in De libero arbitrio, written between De ordine and De musica, made just such a statement: ‘You will see that whatever [physical object] pleases you and whatever seduces you through the corporeal senses is founded on number.’Footnote 28 But still, this does not imply a ‘mathematical’ aesthetics.Footnote 29 Rather, it suggests that Augustine had become an ideologically more consistent neoplatonist because the assertion expresses his belief that everything is ontologically built on number.Footnote 30 Even experiences that seem to be irrational are ultimately founded on number. In evident contradiction to his dictum of De ordine,Footnote 31 this means that Augustine later thought that any element giving rise to sensual pleasure, explicitly including taste and the sense of smell,Footnote 32 can be principally attributed to ‘numerability’ (numerositas).
Be that as it may, it is not stated that the epistemological or metaphysical analysis of what happens when someone feels aesthetical pleasure is a part of this pleasure. This assumption would obscure the very point of Augustine's argument for which the difference between aesthetical pleasure and epistemological or ontological reasoning is of utmost importance, since his intention is to lead from aesthetical pleasure to metaphysical insights (which means to lead away from aesthetical pleasure). When we enjoy a glass of wine or a piece of music we do not need to know the metaphysical reasons why. Such an ‘aesthetical’ judgement is accepted as an empirical and self-sufficient fact and Augustine simply unfolds a neoplatonic explanation for it. But this does not belong to what might be anachronistically considered his aesthetics. Augustine very clearly emphasises the ability to judge correctly music by way of intuition, that is, without knowing the reasons for the pleasure.Footnote 33 Sensuous pleasure is the very goal of music, but Augustine was not concerned with music's goal, which differs from the goal of music theory as a liberal art. Rather, he was using an easily accessible object to unfold a metaphysical idea. Augustine might have chosen the taste of wine but then his undertaking would have been much more difficult, just as would have been the case with timbre. Rhythm, on the other hand, allows an easy illustration of an ontology founded on number. For such an anagogical concept, it is of no relevance that music is an art. In fact, Augustine at one point refers to the regularity of pulse, heartbeat, scratching and chewing as examples of the innate inclination towards rhythmical equality.Footnote 34 The connection between numerology and ‘art’ is accidental; long before Augustine, Plato had used a piece of wood to show the idea of equality that leads from the sensual world to a transcendent idea.Footnote 35
‘What, then, is easy? To love colours, voices and cake, roses and soft bodies?’
So far we have dealt with only one layer of Augustine's text, the metaphysical one, but there is also an ethical layer. It has been demonstrated that Augustine's De musica must not be read in the sense that it was meant to explain music aesthetics in any comprehensive way. The investigation of aesthetical phenomena was subordinate to a pedagogical and philosophical goal. Augustine knew there was much more involved in aesthetical experience than those aspects he was dealing with in De musica. But if there was awareness of the sensuous pleasure of music, what attitude did Augustine have towards it? This question will lead to an answer that hints at Augustine's ambivalent relation to musical experience. There are two aspects to be discussed: the first secular, the other religious.
a) Augustine had already raised ethical issues in the first book of De musica. One such thought is a secondary point. Augustine defines musical knowledge as the knowledge of ‘right’ rhythmical measuring, but during the explanation of the term ‘measuring’ (modulatio) he realised that to speak about a measured motion implies that it is ‘rightly’ measured so he gives another explanation: one has to add ‘rightly’, he explains, because it would not be right if someone sings the sweetest melody and dances in the most beautiful way if the occasion requires gravity.Footnote 36 The term ‘rightly’ suddenly gains an ethical meaning. That thought, secondary as it is, nevertheless suggests that Augustine did not mean to condemn all sweet singing and beautiful dancing, only that the music must suit the situation.
There is another point which Augustine discusses more extensively because it contributes to his larger argument: that music has to be autonomous. Music theory deals with motion – not any motion, but motion that is performed for itself and therefore pleases through itself.Footnote 37 Music has no other purpose than to please through motion that affects the senses. While it is the goal of musica as liberal art to ‘proceed from the corporeal to the incorporeal’, music itself has none other than a sensual purpose.
Here, another ethical aspect comes into play: the investigation of motion that pleases through itself reveals the role of numbers with respect to rhythmic phenomena. Once it has been established that music aesthetics may lead one to numerical insights, moral pressure to follow that path is exerted. This has to do with the idea of human beings and their destination. Humans are gifted with rational abilities that differentiate them from other animals. That being the case and because a nightingale makes music too,Footnote 38 it is a kind of obligation for humans to investigate the grounds of those phenomena rationally. In De ordine, Augustine explained:
For it must occupy us in a special way how the human being has been defined by the wise ancestors: the human being is the rational mortal animal. Here we see two distinguishing marks added to the posited genus which are meant, I believe, to admonish the human being to where he or she should always return and what he or she should flee.Footnote 39
Augustine places this well-considered statement at the very beginning of the exposition of the liberal disciplines.
Music, of course, is a perfect example showing how human beings may shun an animal-like activity by turning to a rational analysis of that very activity, namely, the investigation of sound and rhythm and its effects. That is why Augustine takes the argument in this direction – it is not that he thought ‘true’ music perception would imply this knowledge. It means that once it is determined that music is based on numbers, and its investigation may lead to higher knowledge as an end in itself, the philosophical conscience demands that this path should be followed. The general premise is that human beings must strive for knowledge as an end in itself. Indeed, Augustine argues in De musica that professional musicians who make music in return for payment cannot possibly have understood the value of music. Had they done so, they could not continue in that profession but would have to become philosophers. Hence, rather than suggesting that the true perception of music implies numerical and philosophical thought, he argues that anybody who understands the arithmetical background of music, that is, its potential of leading to higher knowledge, should stop being a professional musician.Footnote 40 This was in perfect accord with his pedagogical system in which music is one of the preparatory disciplines. The investigation of music thus leads to something substantially different which, once recognised, deserves attention more than music.
But if, one might ask, Augustine does not sketch an over-rationalised aesthetics, does he at least condemn music? Again, this is not quite the case. In this context anyway, Augustine chooses not to allow his readers to remain professional musicians once they have understood how to gain that supposedly higher knowledge. However, being not only a great philosopher but also a great writer, Augustine composed his treatise as a dialogue between teacher and disciple. His dialogues are thought to have been mostly drawn from real discussions that Augustine had with his friends,Footnote 41 no matter how fictional they appear. The disciples often have names of real persons. With respect to De musica, however, scholars have sometimes complained that the disciple has a rather nondescript character without idiosyncrasy. Be that as it may, it is the disciple who provides a clue to an even greater understanding of Augustine's argument. The teacher argues that there is no professional musician who possesses musical knowledge in the way described, because if that were the case, he would not sell his knowledge for money and fame.Footnote 42 But when the teacher exposes the goal of his demonstration, the disciple responds tersely: ‘It would be astonishing if you should succeed.’Footnote 43
The teacher then uses an analogy to convince the disciple, arguing that someone who owns a gold coin and gives it away for only ten cents does not understand what a gold coin is. And like this person, someone who makes music for money does not truly understand music. This is a weak argument to be sure, and the disciple instantly and cleverly retorts:
The seller of the coin does not seem to be comparable with the musician, since after receiving applause or some amount of money given to him, he does not lose the science, if he is in possession of it, and has used it to please the people. Rather, enriched with money and delighted by the approval, he returns home with the entire knowledge unscathed. He would be stupid if he were to despise these advantages: Without them he would be much less famous and rich, but with them he would not be even slightly less informed.Footnote 44
To a reader approaching Augustine's text with prejudices intimated at the beginning of this article, it would likely come as a surprise that the teacher has no argument against his disciple's point. Rather, the teacher makes an empirical turn, saying: ‘If you convince me or prove that there is at least one musician who has not exclusively gained his musical skills and does not exclusively execute them publicly in order to earn money or meet with approval, then I will accept that someone may know the science of music and be a professional musician at the same time’.Footnote 45 This is certainly a victory for the disciple, who in the end is Augustine himself.
It is important to understand that the question is not whether to combine music with some kind of aesthetical mathematics – an idea entirely alien to Augustine's concept of music. Rather, the question is whether making music, which is always an essentially sensual matter, distracts a person from being a philosopher. Even looking at musical practice from another perspective does not posit a problem: great persons have always used music to relax from their exhausting activities in order to recover their stressed souls.Footnote 46 Augustine only mentions this in passing, not because he found it problematic, but – I would suggest – because this fact was generally accepted. Nonetheless, in the specific pedagogical context of De musica, it deserved to be explained to young or less educated people that they should not waste their time devoting themselves to nothing but sensuous pleasure.
b) There remains the theological aspect developed in book six that can be dispensed with quickly, since there is no way to demonstrate that Augustine did not mean what he appears to say. At least after his conversion to Christianity, he held the opinion that sensuous pleasure, such as that which music affords, has to be avoided and that one's life should be devoted to God. As mentioned above, Augustine deduces a proof of the existence of God in the sixth book. This becomes the starting point for another moral excursus which turns out to occupy the large last section of this book.Footnote 47 All activities should be aimed at fulfilling God's will. And when the teacher, who by now is obviously Augustine, asks his disciple whether he agrees, the disciple loses his subversive energy: ‘Yes. However, as fast as this goal is understood, as difficult and laborious it is to be reached.’ Augustine replies, as the reader might expect by now: ‘What, then, is easy? To love colours, voices and cake, roses and soft bodies?’Footnote 48 Religious dogmatism no longer allows a sophisticated handling of opposing views which Augustine so brilliantly mastered in the first book.
Of course, the quotation does not contain any sort of aesthetical statement and it was not supposed to. One would have to conclude, then, that his aesthetics, such as it can be extracted from his De musica, is a sensuous aesthetics. It must be added, however, that Augustine did not permit such aesthetics once he became a theologian and clergyman. Still, one should not confuse music aesthetics and the ethical or theological ideals imposed upon them. And the disciple's answers, even the one given in book six, make it clear that the opinion that it is advisable to abstain from music cannot be taken as any generally accepted opinion of that time. Indeed, the contrary must be assumed, for otherwise there would not have been the necessity to unfold the ethic problems in such detail.
Augustine himself fell short of his own ideals. In his Confessiones, which fluctuate between autobiography and theologically motivated fiction, he admitted that he was always more subject to sensuous pleasure than he would allow himself:
The delights of the ear drew and held me much more powerfully, but thou didst unbind and liberate me. In those melodies which thy words inspire when sung with a sweet and trained voice, I still find repose; yet not so as to cling to them, but always so as to be able to free myself as I wish. But it is because of the words which are their life that they gain entry into me and strive for a place of proper honour in my heart; and I can hardly assign them a fitting one. Sometimes, I seem to myself to give them more respect than is fitting, when I see that our minds are more devoutly and earnestly inflamed in piety by the holy words when they are sung than when they are not. And I recognise that all the diverse affections of our spirits have their appropriate measures in the voice and song, to which they are stimulated by I know not what secret correlation. But the pleasures of my flesh – to which the mind ought never to be surrendered nor by them enervated – often beguile me while physical sense does not attend on reason, to follow her patiently, but having once gained entry to help the reason, it strives to run on before her and be her leader. Thus in these things I sin unknowingly, but I come to know it afterward.Footnote 49
Jacques de Liège and musical rhetoric
Augustine wrote at the very beginning of the Middle Ages (if he should be considered a medieval author at all). With Jacques de Liège we jump a thousand years into the future of Augustine's time. The main subject of music theory (meaning musica theorica as opposed to musica practica) in Jacques's time was consonance.Footnote 50 Starting from the Pythagorean tetraktys, this included the theory of tetrachords, hexachords, modes, octave species, and the like. At the root of these sub-theories was the discussion of consonances. Robert Grosseteste even called musica the ‘science of consonances’ (scientia consonantiarum).Footnote 51 It is therefore necessary to investigate the role of sensual pleasure in relation to consonance theory as the core of those texts.
Jacques established an order of consonances characteristic for his time, the basis of their order being the numerical ratios that expressed consonances. The criteria were equality and simplicity, that is, the simpler a consonance's ratio and the closer to equality, the more perfect it was. This premise, drawn from Boethius's De musica, relied philosophically on the idea that the ‘simple’ is of higher value than the ‘composite’, and that equality is of higher value than inequality.Footnote 52 Such reasoning led Jacques to the rule that ratios whose numerator is a multiple of the denominator – 4:2, 6:3, 9:3 and so on (multiplices) – are better than others; of the remaining ratios, those whose numerator and denominator differ by one – 3:2, 4:3 and so on (superparticulares) – are of higher value.Footnote 53 In the end, Jacques established an hierarchical order that begins with the octave (2:1), followed by the twelfth (3:1), the double octave (4:1), the double octave plus fifth (6:1), the fifth (3:2), the fourth (4:3), and finally the whole tone (9:8).Footnote 54 For mathematically more remote consonances in which the ratio between numerator and denominator is more complex (superpartientes), Jacques refrained from making value judgements: the mathematical facts did not allow an unambiguous evaluation of the consonances. Jacques simply arranged them according to size.Footnote 55
Consonances in more complex ratios (superpartientes) were considered of minor value compared to the aforementioned.Footnote 56 This meant that the whole tone was more valuable than thirds or sixths, which come later in the hierarchy because their ratios belong neither to the proportiones multiplices nor to the proportiones superparticulares. Jacques was happy with his argument when he declared: ‘Not unfittingly we can deduce an order of perfection of the consonances from their ratios since the ratio belongs to the causa formalis of the consonances.’Footnote 57
As in the case of Augustine, we again encounter an apparently non-sensuous and even non-sensual judgement as the starting point of music theory. Yet, as I will argue, Jacques's theory comprised the most aesthetical and sensual freedom. He achieved this by unfolding and articulating many aspects implicit (and maybe unconscious) in the texts of his thirteenth- and fourteenth-century colleagues, as well as by introducing unrivalled terminological clarity.
If the clue is to be found in precise terminology, how did Jacques define consonance? He explains – and this deserves to be read carefully: ‘We call consonance … the mixture of any distinguishable equal or unequal sounds, be it that the mixture is sensually pleasant or not, as long as it is reducible to a numerical ratio.’Footnote 58 What is of utmost importance here is the statement that it does not matter for the term and concept of ‘consonance’ in its general and absolute sense (communiter et absolute) whether the mixture is sensually pleasing or not. This explains why the whole tone is more valuable than the third, though this does not seem to make much sense aesthetically. But this is not surprising given that Jacques was not expressing an aesthetical judgement and also because it gives way to an aesthetics that is free of numerical constraints.
Before one can appreciate the aesthetical and indeed sensuous freedom of Jacques's music theory, it is necessary to understand the mathematical term consonance – the central problem of understanding his text relates to its terminology, which is confusing to modern readers. As mentioned before, the subject of music theory in its narrowest sense was consonance, but ‘consonance’ did not signify what it does today. This does not mean that theorists of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries had not yet understood that subject or had not fully grasped the acoustics that underlie consonances. Rather, it means that music theory of that time was dealing with another subject, which came into being when Boethian music theory was interpreted by means of the Aristotelian theory of science. For Boethius, music was a discipline of the so-called Quadrivium.Footnote 59 He differentiated the disciplines in question by differentiating their subjects. Arithmetic is concerned with number per se, geometry with magnitudes per se, music theory with number in relation to another number and astronomy with moving magnitude. Arithmetic and music theory, it should be added, are restricted to whole numbers.
Within the Quadrivium, music was a purely mathematical science despite its being mainly concerned with sound. And there was obviously uncertainty as to whether the subject was a natural or mathematical entity, and what role the sensual aspect of the consonance would play: on the one hand, Boethius defines consonance as the ‘mixture of two sounds that strike the ear in a soft and uniform way’;Footnote 60 on the other hand, in his argumentation Boethius treats consonances exclusively as arithmetical ratios.Footnote 61 (Jacques not only quoted Boethius's definition but also took this ambiguity as the starting point of his own extensive consonance theory.Footnote 62) In Boethius, this ambiguity produces a tension: if he defines consonance by way of its sensual effect, then the arithmetical hierarchy does not seem to make sense.
The apparent contradiction between the explicit sensual and the implicit arithmetical definitions of consonance cannot be entirely resolved. It is, however, possible to reconstruct a concept of consonance that tacitly underlies all argumentation in Boethius's text. This concept is not identical to Boethius's description of consonance, quoted above. It can be found if we ask the following question: do arithmetical ratios ‘represent’ consonances as sensual phenomena (as suggested by the explicit description), or are consonances arithmetical entities, number relations, that are only accidentally related to sensual matter? Put differently, does the term ‘consonance’, for Boethius, refer to a sensual entity that can be ‘explained’ through numbers, or to a numerical entity that can be rendered audible?
If there is a substantial argument in De institutione musica which only works with one of these concepts, excluding the other, it must be Boethius's concept of consonance. And indeed there is just such an argument.Footnote 63 Boethius writes that the whole tone cannot be divided into two equal halves because its ratio, 9:8, cannot be divided into two equal whole-number ratios.Footnote 64 In other words, there is no geometrical mean between 9 and 8 which can be expressed in whole numbers. The argument does not readily catch the reader's eye because, as is well known, in the Pythagorean tuning there does not exist an exact half of the whole tone. Yet Boethius's argument seems absurd, for if numbers serve to explain natural matter, namely consonances, it is inept to argue that an object does not exist simply because some theory of nature does not provide the means to explain it.
Certainly one would underestimate Boethius were it to be argued that he made such a case. He had, after all, translated most of Aristotle's works on logic and the theory of science into Latin. One should instead try to make sense of the argument. Thus, if Boethius's argument is unfolded into a complete syllogism, the answer to the question asked above is arrived at automatically:
1 ‘Superparticular’ ratios (i.e. those whose numerator and denominator differ by one, such as 9:8) cannot be divided into two equal halves (allowing only whole numbers).
2 The whole tone is such a ratio.
3 Thus the whole tone cannot be divided into two equal halves.
This reasoning is correct if, and only if, one accepts the second premise which postulates the identity of whole tone and numerical ratio. Thus, a consonance has to be understood as a numerical ratio, that is, Boethius employed the second concept of consonance. For him, consonance is a numerical ratio that can be made audible and not something audible that can be explained through number. The numerical ratio is the essence or the causa formalis of the consonance (as Jacques would later clarify the matter),Footnote 65 that is, the consonance is identical to the numerical ratio.
While this interpretation allows Boethius's De institutione musica to be read as a consistent text, it fails to solve the latent contradiction between the sensual description of consonance that remains without significance for the text as a whole and the identification of consonance with the numerical ratio that directs the reasoning and argument of the entire text. Moreover, this interpretation raises the question as to whether any numerical ratio is a consonance. Boethius implicitly provided an answer by restricting consonances to a handful of ratios,Footnote 66 but he did not explain on what grounds. For example, many ‘superparticular’ ratios are not counted among the consonances. Boethius's description of consonance leads to the assumption that the sensual aspect comes into play. What remains unclear is the integration of arithmetical and sensual elements into a consistent theory.
This was the starting point for Jacques de Liège, among whose goals was the establishment of a consistent theory of consonances based on Boethius's text, the task being to reconcile the sensual and the arithmetical aspects of consonance. Jacques wrote the Speculum musicae after Aristotelian philosophy had become the basis of thirteenth-century philosophy and the subject of music theory was reconsidered within this context. The special position of astronomy and music theory, the subjects of which were mathematical but concerned with physical entities, was more explicitly discussed using the Aristotelian philosophy of science. The relevant theoretical concepts regulating the interaction between mathematical and natural entities and methods were scientia media and subalternatio.Footnote 67 While arithmetic and geometry were considered purely mathematical, music theory and astronomy were considered both mathematical and physical. Hence the expression ‘middle sciences’, scientiae mediae, that is, sciences between mathematics and physics. This new model made clear that the subject of music theory was more complicated than it appeared to be. The term subalternatio indicates the hierarchical relationship between the two disciplines that regulates which of them would provide the methodological tools.
Such an enriched theory of science made it possible to explain the subject of music more clearly. Nonetheless, authors still could have chosen between two possibilities, that is, either the sensual or the arithmetical concept of consonance. They chose the one that dominated Boethius's music theory, namely the arithmetical, and there are at least two possible explanations why. First, Boethius's theory would not have worked otherwise. Second, the tradition of considering music theory a mathematical discipline was old; it was easier to so define the subject than re-invent music theory.
Since the newly defined musica was subordinate to arithmetic, its subject had to be some kind of number. Moreover, since the methodological tools of musica were arithmetical ones, only whole numbers could be investigated. This also explains why the exact half of the whole tone did not exist. The subject of music was ‘number related to sound’ (precisely specifying the relation between mathematics and physics), numerus sonorus, defined as an entity with its own existence, that is, as a number that when related to another number and applied to physical matter produces a harmonic mixture. If the matter is sound, the result is called consonance.Footnote 68 If one relates 9 to 8 and applies this ratio to physical matter – for example on a monochord – a mixture of sound is produced. By definition, the sound produced is a consonance whether it pleases the ears or not. No author stated this more clearly than Jacques de Liège, who strove for the utmost clarity and consistency.
It is precisely in that sense that Jacques developed his order of consonances, drawing exclusively upon arithmetical features. He called it the ‘order according to Nicomachus’Footnote 69 (the author of the Greek book Boethius had used as the main source for his treatise). In fact, the order of Boethius was not as elaborate as that of Jacques. Only the principle of the latter was drawn from Boethius. Yet there was a more important difference between the orders: Jacques gave his theory a consistency lacking in Boethius. At the same time, Jacques achieved a free and sensual view on music aesthetics by clarifying the subject of music theory as well as explaining its methods and limits.
Jacques managed to solve the problems in Boethius's text by establishing a consistent theory whose subject was consonantia. It becomes clear that this term cannot be translated simply as ‘consonance’. Using the Aristotelian philosophy of science, Jacques fully articulates the subject of music theory and its consequent methods. As a result, he needed to eliminate any sensual element from the definition of the subject consonantia which, as we have seen, is the ‘mixture of any distinguishable equal or unequal sounds, be it that the mixture is sensually pleasant or not, as long as it is reducible to a numerical ratio’. This definition removes any inconsistency from Boethius's theory and makes the application of purely arithmetical methods for the ordering of consonantiae perfectly plausible.Footnote 70
Yet if this solves problems in Boethian consonance theory, one might argue, it altogether exorcises sensual qualities from music. But precisely the opposite is true: Jacques separated the two elements that Boethius had combined, which had produced a tension in terms of theoretical consistency. By separating these two elements, each gains independence. By separating consonantia from sensual elements, Jacques also separated arithmetical constraints from the sensual object. He constructed an independent object which he defined through its sensual qualities, following Boethius's sensual description of consonantia under a different name: concordia or concordantia. ‘Perfect consonance (perfecta concordia) is a pleasant, uniform, and delighting sound of diverse, but mixed and blended tones that reach the ear.’Footnote 71 The English ‘consonance’ is an adequate translation for concordia, but not consonantia.
This definition is purely sensual, Jacques having separated the aesthetical subject almost completely from the mathematical one. This separation allows him to apply entirely different criteria to the evaluation of (sensual) consonances. Indeed, he suggests that judging consonances is more the work of a rhetorician than a mathematician, who looks for reasons. To deal with consonances is thus not a purely mathematical thing.Footnote 72 Rather, there is an entirely different and (more or less) independent aspect to it which, however, is not the mathematician's business, that is to say, not Jacques's business. He admitted that:
It does not seem easy to me to give the reasons for consonance and dissonance and why this one is better, the other one worse. For practice and art (ars) have shown that every human being best understands by performing. However, I myself have never played an instrument which, together with the ars musica, would have provided not insignificant experience in order to judge generally more securely and truly about consonantiae, i.e. which are more consonant, which are less consonant and equally about dissonances. Even though performing musicians who are restricted to practice judge about these things well and fast, they are not able to tell the reasons unless something is found through ars.Footnote 73
That is why, despite his obvious interest in musical practice, Jacques did not address himself to these matters at length, compared, that is, with his discussion of consonantia. He admits his lack of a particular kind of knowledge, accepts in a certain field the priority of practice, and acknowledges that the reasons for consonances are not exclusively mathematical.Footnote 74 (This, of course, does not keep Jacques from making strong aesthetical judgements in the, albeit explicitly satirical,Footnote 75 seventh book of his Speculum.) Again, we face knowledge and a potential aesthetics that explicitly lie beyond Jacques's main focus. Therefore, it is necessary to search for the actual medieval aesthetics in an area with hardly any written theorising.
A mathematician such as Jacques would have known everything about the subject of music theory, namely numerus sonorus and consonantia. He claimed to know the exact order of these entities, but does not claim to have the knowledge about consonances as musical material because it is not his field. This also implies that medieval texts were silent about the aesthetical aspects of consonance and music in general because it was not their subject. This was the case because music theory was a mathematical discipline that dealt only with a certain mathematical subject and restricted itself (in accordance with Aristotle's theory of science) to mathematical demonstrations. This is entirely legitimate and it would be a fundamental misunderstanding to consider this anti-sensual aesthetics. Indeed, it was not aesthetics, and Jacques shows that he was not only aware of this but also made room for an aesthetics that he did not expound upon because it was not within his province as a mathematician. It is perhaps possible to detect a feeling for the necessity of a discipline that deals with aesthetical matters, but such did not exist. But to conclude from that fact that medieval music listeners and authors of music theory treatises did not accept sensuous pleasure would be an error.
Once this difference is accepted, medieval texts start to tell us more about the sensual and, indeed, sensuous quality of their author's musical perception. Astonishingly, the few hints Jacques gives us as to who would make a good aesthetical judge resemble thoughts advanced in aesthetical treatises of the Enlightenment, for instance, David Hume's essay Of the Standard of Taste. Jacques wrote that ‘the ear has to be in good condition and that the judge should have musical knowledge’. The judge also needs to be healthy; fever in particular distorts auditory experience.Footnote 76 These are empirical observations on musical judgements, entirely free of mathematical speculations. Jacques was also aware of individual likes and dislikes with regard to musical perception, and the fact that a person is not always affected by music in the same way, depending upon his or her mood. He also expressed the thought that people react differently to music depending on their age and cultural origin, that is, to which gens they belong.Footnote 77 That musical judgement is a matter of taste implies an essentially individual element of aesthetical liking: ‘As not all palates are pleased by the same dish, so not all ears are delighted if one and the same mode of sound is produced.’Footnote 78 Jacques's mathematical theory did not exclude these observations: it made them possible.
The same is true for many other music theorists; only the sensuous aspects remain even more implicit. If one looks into more practical texts from around Jacques's time (c.1250 to 1350), many references to aesthetical qualifications may be found. Anonymous IV appreciated the many beauties in Perotin's organa;Footnote 79 John of Garland, Franco of Cologne and the anonymous author of the Quatuor principalia declared that, in many situations, dissonances, parallel motion, and the like are permitted in order to achieve beauty ‘propter pulchritudinem’.Footnote 80 In accordance with Jacques's assertion that the decision about the use of consonances resembles the work of the rhetorician, many authors used terms stemming from rhetoric when they described compositional practices that were somehow against the rules. The Anonymous of St Emmeram uses such terms abundantly.Footnote 81 There are more examples for decidedly rhetorical formulations of aesthetical qualities. Perhaps the most impressive are those of Jerome of Moravia, who differentiated between stylistic registers. There was a ‘gradus pulcher’, a ‘gradus pulchrior’ and a ‘gradus pulcherrimus’. What is more, there was even a ‘gradus turpis’ (ugly), ‘gradus turpior’ and a ‘gradus turpissimus’.Footnote 82
Aesthetical habits varied with time and space and Jacques certainly knew this. He observed that ‘modern singers do not restrict the concept of consonance too much, they do not limit it so strictly’. And he plainly accepted that:
They confirm this with regard to more equal as well as unequal sounds and their mixtures, whether they are sweet to the sense of hearing or not; and they do so not all without reason if it is true what we state. For is it any wonder that the term consonance has changed its content? At the beginning, when mankind used only a simple and moderate music, only four consonances and four strings were in use. But now, since music has been extended in view of pitches, instruments, modes, consonances and songs – is it any wonder that the word consonance refers to more sounds and mixtures as in those times? For the reference of names uses to broaden and shift according to the diversity of time.Footnote 83
Thus even if something had been true in Guido of Arezzo's time, it need not be true for modern times.Footnote 84 In the same vein, Johannes Boen noted historical and regional differences between musical habits.Footnote 85 It is interesting that he only referred to this fact because he needed an argument within a remote context. Had he not, he probably would not have mentioned it. There seem to have been many aspects in medieval music theory that we lack in the sources because they were self-evident for medieval authors.
The sensual and indeed sensuous aspects of music were not denied but rather were tacitly accepted because they were self-evident. They played a minor role in the explicit and written discourses about music probably because sensual as well as emotional elements escaped scientific reasoning and had little to do with the subject of music theory as it was understood. That we need to scrape together texts with explicit statements about sensual aspects does not mean that the matter was unimportant or even unknown, but that it did not have a place in musica theorica.
Guido of Arezzo
In turning finally to Guido of Arezzo, we focus on a person living approximately midway between Jacques and Augustine. Because Guido was much less a systematic philosophical thinker than the other two authors, the following comments will be selective, highlighting independent aspects.
Music and the praise of God
Music theory between 800 and 1200 addresses itself mainly to plainchant, that is, functional liturgical music. It would hardly be surprising to find evidence here supporting the cliché that medieval theorists' ears were closed to sensuous pleasure or that they were searching for the meaning of music in the praise of God rather than joy. Indeed, when Guido in his Micrologus considered the effect of music, referring to the Old Testament story of David's exorcising a demon that had overcome Saul, he expressed his astonishment, writing that ‘only divine wisdom understands such power. However, we who only see as in a mirror want to use this power for the praise of God’.
By using a biblical quotation (1 Cor 12, 13) and especially by defining music's function as ‘praise of God’, medieval reality seems to follow the nineteenth- and twentieth-century stereotypes of the Dark Ages. Rosario Assunto used this very quotation in his Die Theorie des Schönen im Mittelalter to characterise the religious foundation of Guido's treatise.Footnote 86 An investigation of the textual transmission, however, turns out to be instructive. The quotation was taken from Raymund Schlecht's nineteenth-century edition of the Micrologus, which followed a text Martin Gerbert established in his Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum. It reads: ‘Quae tamen vis solum divinae sapientiae ad plenum patet. Nos vero quae in aenigmate ab inde percepimus, in divinis laudibus utamur’.Footnote 87 The parallel passage from Smits van Waesberghe's later edition differs in that it omits the last phrase: ‘But this effect is fully clear only to Divine Wisdom through which we only receive a pale reflection’.Footnote 88 Unfortunately van Waesberghe did not provide an explanation of the editorial principles. Which of the seventy-seven listed manuscripts were used to establish the text and according to which methodical decisions this was done, remains obscure.Footnote 89 The editor did, however, report that only six manuscripts that contain the ‘praise of God’ phrase, none of which originated in the eleventh century (unlike the oldest manuscripts). In another manuscript, the phrase ‘ab inde percepimus’ has been erased and replaced by ‘in divinis laudibus utamur’.
These observations may be used as the starting point for the most diverse speculations about why the topos occurs in some manuscripts, but without new source evidence such speculations would not be productive. Yet one conclusion cannot be ignored: the topos obviously was so secondary that the text made sense with or without it. It was not part of an essential line of thought or argumentation. A statement that seemed so characteristic because it so neatly matched the modern stereotypes of medieval music aesthetics and that had been quoted in Assunto's influential book turns out to have played a minor role.
Reason
As the earlier text analyses have demonstrated, aesthetically relevant statements were made only in passing and biased readings of the sources tend to overlook them. Yet Guido's text is full of aesthetical considerations and the fact that they do not accord with a certain picture of the Middle Ages explains why they have not become well known. Though one may see Guido as the inventor of the hexachord and solmisation, one may be aware of the so-called Guidonian hand or Guido's contribution to the history of notation, Guido is not known as a theorist of aesthetics. Nonetheless, two chapters of the Micrologus are devoted to aesthetical considerations. More important than the quantity is their quality as documents of medieval aesthetical thought.
Again, at first sight, readers may be guided in a wrong direction by these chapters when they see that one of the central aesthetical terms in Guido's treatise is rationabilitas. Guido wrote: ‘Those who compose a chant put together discrete and diverse melody formulas in a rational way.’Footnote 90 The term rationabilitas appears to support an interpretation of medieval music theory that was fixated on mathematics and especially number ratios, but this would be almost the opposite of what Guido evidently meant. In his description of discretio rationabilis he gives us the first clue. It reads: ‘A separation is called rational if it produces a moderate variety of melody formulas and sections so that nevertheless melody formulas always correspond with melody formulas and melody sections with melody sections in some harmonic way, i.e. so that there emerges a dissimilar similitude – as in the beautiful Ambrosian [chant].’Footnote 91
An amalgamation of the classical definition of harmony underlies this statement: unity in diversity on the one hand and the classical rhetorical rule variatio delectat on the other – applied to melodic structures. The question of what constitutes that rationabilitas has not yet been answered. Another passage earlier in the same chapter, in which Guido alluded to rational variety, adds important information. He writes that the musician need not stick to the rules as strictly as the poet because the musician's art ‘changes itself completely (in omnibus) with respect to the disposition of the notes in compliance with rational variety’.Footnote 92 It is impossible to resolve all questions that the interpretation of this difficult passage might raise. What is important, though, is that Guido introduces the term rationabilis here and adds an explanation that is not a definition but a comment which is both more and less than a definition: ‘Even though we often do not comprehend this rationabilitas,’ he observes, ‘we consider rational whatever pleases the mind in which reason (ratio) is located.’Footnote 93
In stating that listeners are often unable to comprehend the rationabilitas, Guido even allows an opening for empiricism. It is not so much some preconceived rational norm that is decisive for the aesthetical quality of music but the other way round: whatever pleases musically is predicated to be rational.Footnote 94 Since one knows what pleases aesthetically, by way of experience, that is, empirically and sensually, Guido manages to call the empirical and sensual judgement rational. This is implicit, of course, but the wording is so refined that however irrational an element of the aesthetical experience may be, it can be called rational. Rationabilitas, in fact, is an aesthetical imperative but it does not restrain the freedom of sensual judgement: whatever the senses judge to be pleasant deserves the attribute ‘rational’.
For Guido, the faculty that realises aesthetical pleasure is called mens (I have translated it as ‘mind’). Whatever pleases mens is rational, since ratio, the faculty of reason, is located in mens. The term mens is, however, very ambiguous: mind and character (I almost tend to translate it as ‘mentality’) rank among the semantic fields associated with mens in the Micrologus.Footnote 95 And it would probably not be advisable to pin its meaning on one narrow concept since this broad meaning is precisely the point of Guido's wording. Guido could easily have written ratio instead of mens had he aimed at reducing aesthetical pleasure to rational recognition. His formulation indicates that he accepted that it is a more general faculty than reason alone which experiences aesthetical pleasure. The term mens covers all kinds of mental and spiritual processes, including irrational and sensual experiences.
Guido's wording might suggest two things. First, he seems to have believed in the rational explicability of aesthetical pleasure even where we do not understand its mechanisms. Second, he might have assumed that aesthetical experiences are somehow mediated through an unconscious rational activity of some kind. However, neither epistemological optimism nor the idea of an unconscious rational activity would restrict aesthetical freedom. Rather, they would only imply that a rational explanation exists principally for any empirical and sensual aesthetical judgement, whether one knows of it or not.
Orality (Conclusion)
Guido described some musical features which may be understood as rules for composition. For example, he called for repetitions of sections of melody or their variations which, however, should not deviate too much from their model. Attention should also be paid to the similitude of ascending or descending sections.Footnote 96 If a melodic formula leaps downwards, another should respond by soaring upwards, analogous to looking down into a pond while our mirrored face looks up.Footnote 97 Moreover, melodies should correspond to the emotional content of the words so that grave melodies accompany sad (tristis) texts, lovely (iocundus) melodies accompany tranquil (tranquillus) texts, cheering (exultans) melodies accompany happy (prosper) texts, and so on.Footnote 98 Yet, Guido admonishes, that which has been explained may not be carried out too often or too seldom, but with sensitiveness (discretio).Footnote 99
All these features, one expects, are to be subsumed under the idea of rationabilitas, but Guido is silent on the details. He does not even try to explain why variations, similitude and correspondences are pleasing, or what role reason plays in the processes of aesthetical experience. This silence corresponds to that of Augustine, who did not wish to discuss musical aspects that cannot be reduced to numerical reasoning, and Jacques, who did not feel competent about aesthetical judgement and assigned it to the rhetorician. Obviously the motivations for the respective silences differ. Augustine dealt only with subjects that best suited his pedagogical and philosophical goal; Jacques was not a practising musician and left the topic to them or to rhetoricians. The reason for Guido's silence is less easily found. For one thing, the questions might simply have been too difficult. Even though some rules are known from practice, the reasons for them are not necessarily known. Guido also sought to provide a practical introduction to chant so there was no need to delve into hypotheses of the reasons for practical rules. Be that as it may, all three authors were clearly aware of elements that were of aesthetical relevance but which did not belong to their specific fields and texts.
In all three cases, moreover, the silence starts where the irrational might have come into play. In two cases, subject matter that does not seem to be mathematical is excluded, either because the non-mathematical is not suitable for pedagogical purposes (Augustine) or because it was considered to be the subject of another discipline, albeit one that did not exist: a rhetoric for musicians (Jacques). In the third case, the causes of aesthetical pleasure are accepted as obscure; the irrational is touched insofar as the author must admit that he cannot explain aesthetical phenomena (Guido). To remain silent about a subject that does not belong to one's purpose, or that cannot be dealt with rationally, should be considered a scholarly virtue. But one must not conclude from the absence of more explicit documents that aesthetical thinking did not take place.
The discipline of aesthetics or a tradition of writing about such matters seems to be missing in the Middle Ages. I suppose that such were not considered to be apt for written discourses although they were likely dealt with orally. In fact, immediately after having made the point that the rationabilitas of aesthetical judgement often surpasses comprehensibility, Guido's text gives invaluable evidence of the assumption that aesthetical thinking mainly took place outside the writings of music theory: ‘This, however, and the like can be shown much better by discussing (colloquendo) than by writing.’Footnote 100
Here, I think, we find a key to understanding the silence of medieval texts on the aesthetical experience of music. My assumption would be that the irrational, subjective, individual, culturally relative element inherent in aesthetical experience was considered self-evident and not suitable for a scholarly discipline. This is expressed differently depending on the author. While we found a statement in Augustine's De ordine in which he seemed to suggest that in colours and certain aspects of sound there is something principally irrational, Jacques de Liège argued that as a non-musician and non-rhetorician he was unable to give reasons for aesthetical features. Finally, by using the term rationabilitas, Guido intimated that he assumed some, albeit unconscious, rational activity which he could not explain. These authors did not use an expression such as ‘Je ne sais quoi’ as French authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did, but they behaved like people who knew they ‘did not know’. It was not written about, but rather talked about.
Historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as Rosario Assunto or Umberto Eco could not stand the silence of medieval authors, it seems, so they took components from an entirely different area – musica theorica – and crafted one themselves. The supposed aesthetics of the Middle Ages is an invention of modern scholars. Of course, medieval people did accept and enjoy the sensuous and emotional qualities of music. A quotation such as the following from the fourteenth-century anonymous Compendium de musica should therefore not surprise modern readers:Footnote 101
Here, then, [in the mathematical ratios] we have the order of reason and nature. Practice, however, which seeks sensuous pleasure and is saturated too quickly by the simple, likes to mix more complex ratios into the composition. It does not follow the order of reason, nor does it follow the order of nature, but it produces, so to speak, like a weaver intertwining different kinds of wool and threads, an elaborate cloth that is charming to see and that deserves to be preferred to simple cloth. Also, a painter who transforms natural colours into an artwork mixes many pleasant kinds of colours into the simple ones. Also, an Epicurean cook achieved tastes as pleasant for the palate as possible through a variety of spices and, so to speak, through a certain alienation. And hence, without doubt the ear is delighted by mixtures of sounds as is the eye by mixtures of colours and the palate by mixtures of flavours. Still, the result is that everything corresponds to each other in a firm order.Footnote 102
The precise fact that music does not always follow reason and nature causes the specific aesthetical pleasure. It also explains why this aspect did not become the subject of scientific or scholarly literature. Conversely, it means that there was no contradiction between music theory on the one hand and compositional teaching and practice on the other. This is not to say that there were no frictions or border crossings leading to obscurities. In fact, hardly any theoretician of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries argued as precisely as Jacques de Liège. However, the two fields were for the most part clearly separated and had entirely different but not at all contradictory subjects and methods. There was clearly an awareness of the difference between mathematical or scientific investigations in the nature of number and sound on the one hand, and aesthetical and practical experience and demands on the other.
Put pointedly, one may draw two conclusions from the analyses above. First, the primary goal of music (cantus) was sensuous pleasure. This was not treated in written discourse because it may have been too obvious and it may not have seemed possible to treat related matters in any scientific way. Second, the medieval music theory surveyed in this article cannot be interpreted as aesthetical because an aesthetics so constructed did not exist in the Middle Ages. Indeed, these results permit the customary view to be stood on its head: the strange thing is not why the discipline of ‘aesthetics’ did not exist in the Middle Ages, but why such a discipline was established by the end of the eighteenth century even though the epistemological problems medieval intellectuals presumably sensed had never really been solved.
