Augustine on Music and on History - A. Keller: Aurelius Augustinus und die Musik: Untersuchungen zu “De musica” im Kontext seines Schrifttums. (Cassiciacum, 44.) Pp. 354. Würzburg: Augustinus-Verlag, 1993. DM 87. - C. Müller: Geschichtsbewuβtsein bei Augustinus: Ontologische, anthropologische und... (original) (raw)

The Classical Review, 1997

Abstract

Soon after his conversion, c. 388-390, Augustine wrote De musica as part of the ambitious project to write treatises on all the Liberal Arts, following the tradition of Varro but taking a Christian point of view. He never actually completed this task, and apart from De musica only De dialectica and (perhaps) De grammatica are extant. In general, scholarship has not dealt too much with this early writing of Augustine, and mostly from a narrow perspective, i.e. either within the context of the development of theories on music during the centuries, as proof of the status of education and knowledge in Latin Antiquity, or out of a philosophical/theological interest. K. gives on pp. 47-65 a survey of previous scholarship on De musica, useful, but perhaps not critical enough. Moreover the survey is not complete; cf. in addition A. Burda, 'Zwei Urvater der Kybernetik in der Musik: Augustinus und A. Kircher,' Musica Antiqua 6 (1982), 115-30, and A. Quacquarelli, 'Le science e la numerologia in S. Agostino,' VetChr 25 (1988), 359-79.

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