Of Rhythmic Music and of Metric Music

Rhythmic Music

Rhythmic Music we shall say to be that harmony which is perceived in verse or in prose through the quantity of syllables and through the sound of words, when they are well and fittingly composed together. The knowledge of which consists in judging whether in the prose or in the verse there is a fitting consonance between word and word — that is, whether the syllables of one are well or badly joined with the syllables of the other. Such a judgment cannot be made unless it is first reduced to act and made to sound by means of natural instruments: for it is not the letters but the elements of the letters that produce such fitting consonance — which (according to the Grammarians and according to Boethius as well) are nothing other than the pronunciation of those letters, which are figured with diverse forms, invented for the convenience of expressing the concept without pronounced words. Whence in the general division of Organic Music I have made it draw its origin from the Harmonic or Natural.

Metric Music

One can therefore now know the difference between this and the other species of Music called Metric — whose proper office is to know how to judge in verses the quantity of syllables, that is, whether they are long or short, by means of which the feet are known, and what they are, and their determinate position. For the diversity of feet — of two, three, four, or more syllables — constitutes Metric Music.

Which, if one likewise wishes to define it, is nothing other than the harmony that is born from verse through the quantity of syllables, the composition of which constitutes diverse feet — such as the Pyrrhic, the Iamb, the Spondee, the Trochee, the Tribrach, the Anapest, the Dactyl, the Proceleusmatic, and others that are found in poetry. Which, placed harmonically together according to their determinate position in the verse, offer the greatest delight to the hearing.

The Origin of Rhythmic and Metric Music

And for the same reasons we have given for Rhythmic Music, Metric Music also descends from the same Harmonic or Natural: for the length or brevity of syllables is known and measured by the sound of the voice, whose length or brevity imports time, known through motion. So that it is not from the letters but from the sound of the voices that Metric Music comes to be born — for accompanying it with the sound of artificial instruments, the Metre is formed, as the lyric Poets of antiquity used to do, who sang their verses to the sound of the Lyre or the Cithara. Whence likewise both the Poets and the Verses sung by them come to be called Lyric. And because from the beginning they went little by little seeking to accompany verses with harmony to the sound of the Lyre or Cithara, it has been the opinion of many that those Poets discovered the Laws or rules of verses, which they called Metric.

Scope of the Treatise

To conclude, then, I say that Rhythmic and Metric Music alike descend from the Natural. But because (as Augustine holds) in striking any instrument with the same swiftness or slowness with which we pronounce some word, we can know from the movement the same long and short times — that is, the same numbers that are known in the words — therefore it was not inappropriate to say that these two sorts of Music can also be attributed to the Artificial. For every day we see this done with diverse instruments, to the sound of which various sorts of verses are most fittingly accommodated, according to the number comprehended in the sound born from them. It is indeed true that between that which derives from voices and that which derives from sounds there will be found such a difference that the one can be called Natural Rhythmic or Metric, and the other Artificial Rhythmic or Metric.

These two sorts of Music — because at present they pertain much more to the Poet and the Orator than to the Musician to know — we shall leave aside, reasoning only of the Plain and the Measured, omitting nothing, as is my principal purpose, that is worthy of annotation.