| Popis: |
A viola da gamba made by John Rose in London c.1600 offers a focal point for setting in place five distinct frames for thinking about music in the early modern period: (1) ontology, (2) metaphysics, (3) physics, (4) rhetoric, and (5) ethics. Aristotle’s Categories provided early modern thinkers with a model for regarding Rose’s viol ontologically, as a physical object that could be used in certain ways for certain purposes. The metaphysics of a viol consisted in its being a stringed instrument capable of sounding out the ratios of cosmic harmony. Scientific attention turned to the physics of a viol and the vibrations it produced. Rhetoric as codified in the writings of Cicero and Quintilian was the usual model for investigating the emotional effects of music. Ethical considerations of music made social and moral distinctions among kinds of instruments, the people who played them, and social circumstances of performance and reception. |
