Home Musikalische Diagramme zwischen Spätantike und Karolingerzeit
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Musikalische Diagramme zwischen Spätantike und Karolingerzeit

  • Matteo Nanni EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: November 21, 2017
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Abstract

During the Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, different strategies of visualizing music were adopted. In this article the history and the development of music-related diagrams is put into the larger context of a cultural history of visualization. The philosophical discussion on notational iconicity and diagrammatology, known as ‘Schriftbildlichkeit’, supplies a theoretical background for the description of the music diagrams offered here. The basic question is how visuality and musical graphic (diagrams and notation) interact focusing on a specific visual logic related to musical issues. After a short introduction to Sybille Krämer‘s concept of diagram and after working out some main characteristic of medieval diagrams, a selection of music related diagrams is depicted. The sources presented range from ancient Greek and Latin descriptions of musical diagrams (Aristoxenus of Tarentum, Phaenias of Eresus, Bakchios and Vitruvius) to the wing diagrams of Aristides Quintilianus and Martianus Capella, the structural graphics by Boethius and concludes with the notational diagrams in the Carolingian music treatises (Musica and Scolica Enchiriadis).

Published Online: 2017-11-21
Published in Print: 2017-11-7

© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 25.9.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/mial-2017-0017/html
Scroll to top button