Medieval and Renaissance Music

 

Week 1    Ancient Greek Music and Music Theory


READING

Source Readings in Music History, ed. Oliver Strunk, rev. Leo Treitler (New York and London, 1998) (library):

    4      Cleonides, ‘Harmonic Introduction’

    15    Cassiodorus, from ‘Fundamentals of Sacred
                    and Secular Learning’

    26    Pseudo–Odo of Cluny, ‘Dialogue on Music’

Greek Musical Writings, ed. Andrew Barker (2 vols, Cambridge, 1989)—see vol. 2 for Aristoxenus (pp. 119–189) and Ptolemy (pp. 270–391) (library)

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, Fundamentals of Music, translated by Calvin M. Bower (New Haven & London, 1989) (library)

Musica enchiriadis and scholia enchiriadis, translated by Raymond Erickson (New Haven and London, 1995) (library)

David E. Cohen, ‘Notes, Scales and Modes in the Earlier Middle Ages’ in The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, ed. Thomas Christensen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 307–63 (library)

Charles M. Atkinson, The Critical Nexus: Tone-System, Mode, and Notation in Early Medieval Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) (library)

ESSAY TITLE

Explain the scale system of ancient Greece with reference to the three genera and the principle of fixed and moveable strings.