Medieval music: when I read that word, immediately I hear lutes, pipes and drums in my head and pictures of singing bards, dancing noblewomen and royal parties are popping up. But how was this music perceived by the medieval people? Sensual or intellectual? The enthusiasm of humans to music is old. Already Aristotle considered music as one of the four diciplines (grammar, drawing, gymnastics and music) which was worth to spend free time in. The purpose of music was always the same: providing pleasure (hedone — delectatio). “Delectation that accompanies leisure is understood as the antithesis of sadness caused by work.” Work? What has work to do with music? Does it refer to playing music instead of listening to it? No. It is the other way around.“Play [music] should be a remedy for sadness and should provide pleasure in periods of leisure and recreation. On the other hand, the purpose of deductio (listening) is to give rise to noble and worthy thought as well as speculation or contemplation of things divine.” So listening to music is sort of intellectual work which can result in pleasure (delectatio). The base of this “listening is mental work” idea, is the Pythagorean tradition, which was a “major force in medieval music theory — the relationship between sounds can be expressed numerically, it may therefore be considered in terms of the relationship of two numbers, apart from actual sound and beyond physical time.” Therefore, besides the sensual level, there is also an intellectual level of music. And this is why the medieval philosopher “Peter of Auvergne considered deductio (listening) an intellectual activity dictated by the mind that led through delectatio (pleasure) to happiness”. But of course that doesn’t mean, that medieval people were all mind working people which couldn’t enjoy music just by listening, as the most of us are doing it normally. Also in the medieval times, according to Peter von Auvergne, there were two categories of listeners: “in the first category are free and educated persons prepared for intellectual pursuits, while the second category included uneducated and hard working persons who in moments of ease derive pleasure from games and spectacles”. Referring to the fact how I use music in my free time, I definitely belong to the second category. What about you? "The Medieval Concept of Music Perception. Hearing, Calculating and Contemplating."
Elzbieta Witkowska-Zaremba Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis16 (2014): 369-376.
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