Porphyry's Commentary on Ptolemy's Harmonics

Andrew Barker (University of Birmingham)

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English

Cambridge University Press
08 February 2024

Theory of music & musicology; Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500

Porphyry's Commentary, the only surviving ancient commentary on a technical text, is not merely a study of Ptolemy's Harmonics. It includes virtually free-standing philosophical essays on epistemology, metaphysics, scientific methodology, aspects of the Aristotelian categories and the relations between Aristotle's views and Plato's, and a host of briefer comments on other matters of wide philosophical interest. For musicologists it is widely recognised as a treasury of quotations from earlier treatises, many of them otherwise unknown; but Porphyry's own reflections on musical concepts (for instance notes, intervals and their relation to ratios, quantitative and qualitative conceptions of pitch, the continuous and discontinuous forms of vocal movement, and so on) and his snapshots of contemporary music-making have been undeservedly neglected. This volume presents the first English translation and a revised Greek text of the Commentary, with an introduction and notes designed to assist readers in engaging with this important and intricate work.

Edited and translated by: Andrew Barker (University of Birmingham)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Weight: 842g
ISBN: 9781009490863
ISBN 10: 1009490869
Pages: 589
Publication Date: 08 February 2024
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction; Text and translation: Book I; Book II.

Andrew Barker is Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Birmingham. He has been researching in the field of ancient Greek music and musical theory since the 1970s, and has published six books (including The Science of Harmonics in Classical Greece (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and a great many articles on these topics. He is the Founding President of the International Society for the Study of Greek and Roman Music (Moisa), and Editor of the journal Greek and Roman Musical Studies.