The Origins of Music Theory in the Age of Plato

Gurd combines analytical precision with lucidity and insight, bringing fresh clarity to a notoriously complex set of texts. This illuminating book will be read with profit and enjoyment not only by classicists but by scholars in all branches of the humanities.

Vorwort
The first assessment of the historical context and development of Plato's ideas about music, the ways in which these were taken up by other ancient thinkers, and their influence on modern music theory and ear training.

Autorentext
Sean Alexander Gurd is Professor in the department of Ancient Mediterranean Studies at the University of Missouri, USA. His books include Iphigenias at Aulis: Textual Multiplicity, Radical Philology (2006), Work in Progress: Literary Revision as Social Performance in Ancient Rome (2012), and Dissonance: Auditory Aesthetics in Ancient Greece (2016).

Zusammenfassung
Listening is a social process. Even apparently trivial acts of listening are expert performances of acquired cognitive and bodily habits. Contemporary scholars acknowledge this fact with the notion that there are auditory cultures. In the fourth century BCE, Greek philosophers recognized a similar phenomenon in music, which they treated as a privileged site for the cultural manufacture of sensory capabilities, and proof that in a traditional culture perception could be ordered, regular, and reliable. This approachable and elegantly written book tells the story of how music became a vital topic for understanding the senses and their role in the creation of knowledge. Focussing in particular on discussions of music and sensation in Plato and Aristoxenus, Sean Gurd explores a crucial early chapter in the history of hearing and gently raises critical questions about how aesthetic traditionalism and sensory certainty can be joined together in a mutually reinforcing symbiosis.

Inhalt
Preface List of Illustrations Introduction Plato Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Aristoxenus Chapter Four Chapter Five Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index