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Quadrivium · VI

Music

At its center is the Pythagorean discovery: consonance is ratio made audible. From there the art reaches into composition, into culture, and into what the ancients did not blush to call the education of desire.

I. What the Studium has

Hear a ratio become consonance.

Companion to the Seven Pillars certificate

Harmonic ratio

Perfect fifth

Two lengths stand in one audible relation. The strings make proportion available to both reason and hearing.

II. From the Seven Pillars

Music: Understanding the Mysteries: the six lectures on this art in the Institute’s certificate course, given on artsofliberty.org and heard there.

  1. 1Rearing in Music Is Most Sovereign
  2. 2Music and Culture
  3. 3Composition
  4. 4The Pythagorean Discovery
  5. 5Beyond Pythagoras
  6. 6Beyond Polyphony
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom ↗

III. In the galleries

  1. Philosophy and the Seven Liberal ArtsFrom the Hortus Deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg, Twelfth century
  2. The School of AthensRaphael, 1511
  3. The Seven Liberal ArtsFrancesco Pesellino, Painted in the artist’s lifetime, 1422–1457
  4. The Seven Liberal Arts Persecuted by Pluto and BacchusJost Amman, Sixteenth century
  5. The Seven Liberal ArtsVirgilius Solis, Sixteenth century
  6. Philosophy Presenting the Seven Liberal Arts to BoethiusCoëtivy Master (Henri de Vulcop), 1460–1470

IV. In the Library

The Music shelf →The Quadrivium shelf →

V. In the Atlas

Continue the inquiry

Explore sources, people, and connected ideas.

Resource libraryOpen the music collection →Tradition AtlasTrace proof, ratio, and motion →Teacher StudioTurn this art into a lesson →