That There Are Three Kinds of Music; on the Power of Music

The Three Kinds

At the outset, then, in treating music it seems proper to say provisionally how many kinds of music those schooled in it have found to be comprehended. They are three. The first is the cosmic, the second the human, and the third that which is constituted in certain instruments, such as the cithara, or the tibia, and others which serve melody.

Musica Mundana

The first, which is cosmic, is chiefly to be discerned in those things which are observed in the sky itself, or in the combination of elements, or in the diversity of seasons. For how can it come about that so swift a celestial machine moves on a silent and noiseless course? Even though that sound does not reach our ears — which necessarily happens for many reasons — it nevertheless cannot be that the motion of so many and so great bodies should produce no sound at all, especially since the courses of the stars are joined together with so great a fitness that nothing equally compacted, nothing equally fitted together, could be conceived. For some orbits are carried higher, others lower, and all revolve with such equal impulse that a fixed order of their courses is reckoned through their unequal differences. For this reason a fixed order of their modulation cannot be absent from this celestial revolution.

Now, unless a certain harmony joined together the different and opposing forces of the four elements, how could they unite in one body and one mechanism? But all this diversity brings forth such variety of seasons and fruits that it nevertheless makes one body of the year. Thus if you were to take away in mind and thought any one of those things that supply such variety, all things would perish and, as it were, preserve none of their harmony. And just as in the lower strings there is a certain mode of tension such that the gravity of the pitch does not descend all the way to silence, and in the acute strings a certain limit of sharpness is maintained lest the strings, stretched too tightly, be broken by the very thinness of the sound, but the whole body of strings is mutually consistent and harmonious with itself — so too in cosmic music we perceive that nothing can be so excessive as to destroy some other thing by its own excess. Everything either bears its own fruits or aids others in bearing theirs. For what winter confines, spring releases, summer warms, autumn ripens; and the seasons in turn either bring forth their own fruits or give others aid in bringing theirs forth. Of these things there will be more careful discussion later.

Musica Humana

Whoever descends into himself understands human music. For what is it that blends together the incorporeal vivacity of reason with the body, if not a certain fitting together and, as it were, a tempering of low and high pitches producing one consonance? What else is it that joins together the parts of the soul, which, as Aristotle holds, is compounded of the rational and the irrational? What is it that mingles the elements of the body, or holds its parts together in a fixed and proper fitting? I shall speak of these things also later.

Musica Instrumentalis

The third kind of music is that which is said to reside in certain instruments. This is governed either by tension, as in strings; or by breath, as in the tibia or those instruments that are set in motion by water; or by a certain striking, as in those things that are cast in hollow bronze — and from these diverse sounds are produced.

It seems, therefore, that the music of instruments is the first to be treated in this work. This much serves as a preamble; now it is necessary to discuss the basic elements of music.