The Relationship between Neoplatonic Aesthetics and Early Medieval Music Theory: The Ascent to the One (Part 3)

by Glen Wegge

            When the writers of the Middle Ages wrote of the music of the soul, they were really speaking of three different harmonies. First, the harmony of the body, which was named health. Second, the harmony of the soul, which was named virtue. And third, the harmony between the body and the soul, which accounted for the communication between the body and the soul. These three together realized music of the soul.^[1]

            Harmony serves allegorically to describe many other things, including humors, speech and action.^[2] Censorinus (early 3rd cen.) held that even the day of a birth contains music.^[3]   He explained that a soul descends from the heavenly realm of Forms (which includes harmony). The Universe was created by harmony, and all souls are on a wheel of life operating under the principles of harmony. With these ideas in mind, it makes perfect sense to claim that the day of birth contains music since harmony pervades everything. 

            In Enneads I.3.1, Plotinus stated that the harmony of the Intellectual world ravishes all, thus asserting the importance of harmony in the universe. The Corpus Hermeticum (3rd cen.) concurs. 

For the true knowledge of music is nothing other than this: to know the ordering of all things and how the Divine Reason has distributed them; for this ordering of all separate things into one, achieved by skillful reason, makes the sweetest and truest harmony with the Divine Song.^[4]

We can easily perceive why the Neoplatonists believed that the soul may ascend by understanding harmony. Below, three authors illustrate the importance of harmony. The Corpus Hermeticum describes the ascent. The participant, Poimandres, speaks directly to Nous, the second member of the three Hypostases (the three Hypostases are the One, Nous, and All-Soul). To assert that Poimandres is "speaking to Nous" (or Mind) is an expression because, according to Plotinus (Enneads VI.6.[34]15), Nous or Mind is the location of the mathematicals. Therefore, to "speak to Nous" means to study or use the mathematicals. Plato explained in Republic VII (521C-541B) and Meno (81A-D) that mathematics led a soul to understanding higher things in a hierarchical ladder of importance.^[5] And, Martianus Capella (ca. 410-39) explains, in an allegorical fashion, the use of the Quadrivium as an educational catalyst that can help a soul find the path of ascent.  All the authors mentioned above agree that the mathematicals, which include music, are vital for the ascent of the soul.

            Christian writings carry forward this lively harmony allegory. Christian writings generally concur with the Neoplatonic writings with regard to the process of the ascent but, to a Christian, the goal of the ascent is God, not the One. Additionally, in the view of Christian writers, music became a spiritual perfecter.^[6] Augustine (354-430) in De Musica saw music as a stepladder (scala or a scale) in the ascent of the soul to God.^[7] De Bruyne describes how the Christian Cassiodorus viewed the ascension. 

The ancients, according to Cassiodorus, believed that supreme happiness lies in the contemplative enjoyment of the eternal harmony inherent in sonorous melodies; from physical sensation they ascend to proportions, and from actualized proportions to intelligible numbers.  The Christian ascends still higher, proceeding from numbers to Unity; in him the experience of this musical mystery flowers into mystical ecstasy.^[8]

Cassiodorus's view is notably similar to Plato's. Cassiodorus added the Neopythagorean notion of ascending from intelligible numbers to Unity, but otherwise his description of the ascent is the same.

            Christian writers sometimes expounded upon metaphysical issues using protracted musical allegories. De Bruyne gleaned from original sources several common allegories and presented them as follows. 

The cithara reminds us of Holy Scripture; its sounding board is the symbol of Reality and History, its strings are the instruments which, stretched above History, reveal the mystical significance of its events. The double tetrachord is the sign of Christ; one represents His Humanity, in the deep sounds, His hidden life; in the high-pitched sounds, His passion and death. The image of the Divine Harmony is achieved either in the Resurrection or in eternal glory. Every symphony appears as the image of the Universe unified in God.^[9]

Prominent as musical allegory was in the early writers, other writers felt that music defined all reality. Pseudo-Dionysius indicates that all of reality is determined by divine harmony and proportion. 

We have agreed that the most venerable Hierarchy of the Intelligences, which is close to God, is consecrated by His first and highest Ray, and uplifting itself directly to It, is purified, illuminated and perfected by the Light of the Godhead which is both more hidden and more revealed. It is more hidden because It is more intelligible, more simplifying, and more unitive; It is more revealed because It is the First Gift and the First Light, and more universal and more infused with the Godhead, as though transparent. And by this again the second in its own degree, and by the second the third, and by the third our hierarchy, according to the same law of the regular principle of order, in divine harmony and proportion, are hierarchically led up to the super-primal Source and End of all good orders, according to that divinely established law.^[10]

Pseudo-Dionysius related his theory of emanations and the path a soul must take to ascend to God. Pseudo-Dionysius was not referring here to Nous or Logos (or All-Soul) in his use of "second" or "third" but rather to the nine angelic orders in three hierarchies.

            In Neoplatonic thought all reality emanates or cascades down from above in the following fashion. The One emanates Nous which emanates All-Soul which emanates everything else. This process of emanations also creates a significance for music. Music created by man reflects the music of the cosmos; therefore, music can aid the soul in the reascent to the One.^[11]

            John Scotus Erigena describes beauty in musical terms, suggesting how ascent can occur by means of beauty. 

In its basic structure, therefore, beauty is not defined by the conditions of materiality. It attains its highest degree of perfection in the world of indivisible Ideas, which are harmonized in the simplicity of the one God. Beauty is harmony. But harmony is simply the reduction of the manifold to the one, the unequal to the equal, and the diversified to the homogeneous, by means of adaptation and consonance.^[12]

Notice that beauty harmonizes and helps a soul to attain unity with God (or the One in other writings). Writers from Saint Augustine to John Scotus Erigena, the beginning and the end of our historical time-frame, utilized musical terms to describe beauty.  Their ideas are held generally and are not idiosyncratic.

            Medieval thinkers held that harmony is a manifestation of number and proportion. If all of reality is based on number and proportion, as Augustine^[13] and most philosophers since Pythagoras believed, then everything can be reduced to a mathematical construct in a proportional scheme. In fact, Book VI of Augustine's De musica contains titles of two chapters that expose his thought concerning number. The chapters are entitled De animi numeris eorumque gradibus ("Concerning the numbers of the soul and their ranking") and De numeris aeternis a Deo procentibus (Concerning the eternal numbers proceeding form God"). Aristides Quintilianus asserts that number is in the soul, and he also elucidates how the soul may be affected. 

There is one argument that the soul is a certain harmonia and harmonia exists through numbers. Of course, since harmonia in music is composed through the same proportions, when the similar proportions are moved the similar passions are also moved at the same time.^[14]

Most writers in the early medieval time-frame viewed man is a microcosm of the universe (the macrocosm). If the same numbers and proportions exist in music, the soul, and the universe,^[15] then with proper music, a soul could participate in the divine. Or, stated differently, music allows the soul to participate in the divine because the soul and the cosmos have the same numerical relationships. Since all of reality is engaged in the same numerical relationships, it is not farfetched for Aristides Quintilianus to formulate relationships between different aspects of reality.^[16]

            Aristides Quintilianus' approach of relating diverse ideas realizes an importance for "proportion." Eco, approaching the issue of proportion rather more broadly, explains that proportion is a transcendent element. Proportion is also shown as a means to interpret reality. 

Once the Medievals had developed fully a metaphysics of beauty, it followed that proportion, since it was an aspect of beauty, was considered to participate in its transcendental nature. Proportion, like being, was not expressible in a single definition, but could be realised on diverse and multiple levels. Just as there were infinite ways of being, so there were infinite ways of making things in accordance with proportion.^[17]

            Proportion is described by some ancient authors as having quasi-magical properties because of its relationship to the tetractys of the decad.^[18] This tetractys is comprised of numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, which combine to equal 10. 

Tetractys

 In decimal terms, 10 is 1, and the ancients therefore saw this mathematical construct as circular. Consequently, it acquired a mystical property. Since the octave (2:1), the fifth (3:2), and the fourth (4:3) are acoustic consonances and are made up the four numbers of the tetractys, these four numbers were elevated in status above other numbers. Later, the authority of the tetractys led theorists to establish the octave, fifth, and fourth as "perfect," while other intervals of seconds, thirds, sixths, and sevenths were considered "imperfect." The aesthetic experience of music is, therefore, grounded in numerical and proportional relationships.

            Music helps a soul participate in the divine, and the means by which a soul adapts to the proportions of the universe is mimesis (or imitation). Mimesis causes a soul to imitate the proportions of the universe. Mimesis causes the things of this world to be conformed to the more pure and incorruptible divine things. In fact, mimesis could be viewed as "the basic technique and the criterion by which a work would be judged."^[19] 

Since things here are composed by mimesis with the more valuable things and take their creation and procure Being in relation to the movement and change of those things, and since there is a difference in both regions (the one being pure and incorruptible, the other turbid and muddy), in that place, a perfect and unhindered actuality is born, while here it is defective, maimed, and troublesome, not through the cause of the doer, but through the disorder and debility of matter…so also the actuality deriving from the universe touches more the far side, which is adapted through greater divinity, and more obscurely the things of this world, which have become turbid through much distance and through bodily mist and sediment.^[20]

Mathiesen explains the concept of mimesis in another fashion: 

Aristides Quintilianus shows how all the parts of music—pitch, scale, tonos, rhythmic pattern, and so on—are like the order of the universe, and therefore through mimesis, music may make the order of the soul like the order of the universe.^[21]

            When mimesis occurs, it creates a character or ethos (moral character) in the soul derived from the music. Lippman explains that "it is the power of music to imitate [mimesis] virtue that explains its capacity to influence and mold character."^[22] From Plato onward, philosophers and music theorists believed that different kinds of music produced different types of ethos. Aristides Quintilianus assiduously (if laboriously) describes the different ethical effects. 

Melic compositions differ from one another: in genus, as enharmonic, chromatic, diatonic; in scale, as hypatoid, mesoid, netoid; in tonos, as Dorian, Phrygian; in nomic or dithyrambic mode; in ethos, as we speak of the systaltic, through which we move the painful passions, the diastaltic, through which we awaken the spirit, and the medial, through which we bring the soul round to quietude. These were called ethoses since the states of the soul were first observed and set right by them. But not by them alone; rather these worked together as parts for the treatment of the passions, and that melos was perfect which also unceasingly applied paideia.^[23]

Weiss and Taruskin believe that behind the notion of ethos stands Plato's Forms.^[24] Because Plato's Forms are transformed into a hierarchy in Neoplatonism (the One, Nous, and Logos), to a Neoplatonist, the One is behind ethos. In other words, the One is imitated by a musician to create an ethos in the soul and thereby create an ascent in the soul. Music is therefore related to speculation and morality.^[25] Boethius in the following famous quotation unites the ideas of mimesis, ethos, harmony, and the ascent of the soul. 

From this may be discerned the truth of what Plato not idly said, that the soul of the universe is united by musical concord. For when, by means of what in ourselves is well and fitly ordered, we apprehend what in sounds is well and fitly combined, and take pleasure in it, we recognize that we ourselves are united by this likeness. For likeness is agreeable, unlikeness hateful and contrary.^[26]

To be united by likeness refers to the ascent of the soul to the One. Boethius would agree with Plato that music partakes of reason and the harmony of the World-Soul.^[27]

            These notions of mimesis suggest an importance for music that also encompasses the didactic;^[28] that is, paideia (education). It is interesting to note that Martianus Capella, following Boethius, affirmed music within a didactic structure, namely, the Quadrivium.^[29] The four elements of the Quadrivium are meant to lead to the ascent of the soul. These four elements—arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy—are defined as "number itself (arithmetic), number in relations (music); and quantity, which may be studied at rest (geometry) and in motion (astronomy)."^[30] One studies each element in order, and each element is more complex than the previous; that is, music is more complex than arithmetic, geometry more complex than music, and astronomy more complex than geometry. This order of complexity suggests an ascent. This is supported by Plato's view of the role of mathematics in the ascent toward the Forms.^[31]

            Since music plays such an important role in the enlightenment of a soul, what is the role of a musician, or any artist, in facilitating this ascent? Plotinus in the Enneads V.8.1. asserts that the artist should look inward to perceive the One^[32] and imitate the thing perceived. Plotinus explains that it is the artist's responsibility to introduce form found in the artist into the art object. 

Now it must be seen that the stone thus brought under the artist's hand to the beauty of form is beautiful not as stone—for so the crude block would be as pleasant—but in virtue of the Form or Idea introduced by the art. This form is not in the material; it is in the designer before ever it enters the stone; and the artificer holds it not by his equipment of eyes and hands but by his participation in his art. The beauty, therefore, exists in a far higher state in the art; for it does not come over integrally into the work; that original beauty is not transferred; what comes over is a derivation and a minor: and even that shows itself upon the statue not integrally and with entire realization of intention but only in so far as it has subdued the resistance of the material.^[33]

The artist is then capable of permanently rendering form on the substance of the art object. When another person gazes upon the art object, form enters the soul of the viewer.

            In summary, Beauty is able to draw and guide a soul because of the soul's desire, created by Love, to get back to the former state it knew before birth. Philosophy aids in the ascent and Beauty draws the soul. Because all reality exhibits the same proportions, a soul may therefore have contact with the One through music. Music imitates the universe's proportionality and in so doing helps a soul participate in the divine, creating an ascent to the One. It seems safe to conclude that a main consideration of medieval aesthetics is to facilitate the ascent of the soul to the One, in which is contained all Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. Likewise, the role of the artist and, by extension, the medieval musician, was motivated by the desire to help souls ascend to God or the One.

Works Cited

Adams, Karen Cooper.  "Neoplatonic Aesthetic Tradition in the Arts."  College Music Symposium 17 (1979): 17-24.

————————.  "Platonic/Neoplatonic Aesthetic Tradition in Art Theory and Form: Relationship of Sense Object to Idea in Selected Works of Hindemith and Klee."  Ph.D. diss., Ohio University, 1975.

Aristides Qunitilianus.  On Music in Three Books.  Translation with introduction by Thomas J. Mathiesen.  Music Theory Translation Series.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983.

Boethius, Anicius Manilius Severinus.  Fundamentals of Music.  Trans. with introduction and notes by Calvin M. Bower, ed. by Claude V. Palisca.  Music Theory Translation Series.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989.

Bower, Calvin.  "Natural and Artificial Music: The Origins and Development of an Aesthetic Concept."  Musica Disciplina 25 (1971): 17-33.

Bruyne, Edgar de.  The Esthetics of the Middle Ages.  Trans. Eileen B. Hennesey.  New York: F. Unger Publishing Company, 1969.

Bukofzer, Manfred F.  "Speculative Thinking in Medieval Music."  Speculum 17.2 (1942): 165-80.

Eco, Umberto.  Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages.  Trans. Hugh Bredin.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986.

Gersh, Stephen and Charles Kannengieser, ed.  Platonism in Late Antiquity.  Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity, vol. 8.  Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992.

Godwin, Joscelyn.  Music, Mysticism and Magic: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986.

Holbrook, Amy Kusian.  "The Concept of Musical Consonance in Greek Antiquity and Its Application in the Earliest Medieval Descriptions of Polyphony."  Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1983.

Lippman, Edward A.  Musical Thought in Ancient Greece.  New York: Columbia University Press, 1964.

Maddox, Richard Peter.  "Terminology in the Early Medieval Music Treatises (ca. 400-1100 A. D.): A Study of Changes in Musical Thought as Evidenced by the Use of Selected Basic Terms."  Ph.D. diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1987.

Mathiesen, Thomas J.  "Harmonia and Ethos in Ancient Greek Music."  Journal of Musicology 3 (1984): 264-79.

Plotinus.  The Enneads.  Trans. Stephen MacKenna, abridged with an introduction and notes by John Dillon.  New York: Penguin Books, 1991.

Rowell, Lewis.  Thinking about Music.  Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1983.

Strunk, Oliver. Source Readings in Music History: From Classical Antiquity through the Romantic Era.  New York: W. W. Norton, 1950.

Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw.  History of Aesthetics.  vol 2.  Ed. C. Barrett.  Paris: The Hague, 1970.

Wagner, David L, ed.  The Seven Liberal Arts in the Middle Ages.  Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1986.

Wegge, Glen T.  "Musical References in the Neoplatonic Philosophy of Plotinus."  Ph. D. diss., Indiana University, 1999.

Weiss, Piero, and Richard Taruskin.  Music in the Western World: A History in Documents.  New York: Schirmer, 1984.