Elementa harmonica Books II–III : the science reconsidered
Andrew Barker · Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2007
In Meibom's edition of 1652, whose pagination modern scholars use as their standard reference-point, Book ii of the El. harm . occupies a little less than twenty-eight pages of thirty-four lines each. No more than about six pages are taken up with statements and elucidations of facts about musical structures, or of principles governing them, and all those pages fall within the ‘overlapping passage’ discussed on pp. above. Virtually the whole of their contents, by contrast with their manner of presentation, is already familiar from Book i (see 44.21–47.7, 50.14–52.32, 53.32–55.2). Of the remainder, there are two pages of preface (on the value of prefaces in clearing away potential misunderstandings, 30.9–32.9); the revised list of the science's parts occupies nearly four pages, the bulk of which is devoted, as in Book i , to comments on the procedural failings of Aristoxenus' predecessors (35.1–38.26); one page of the ‘overlapping passage’ is its study of the ways in which the topic of melodic continuity should be addressed (52.32–53.32); three pages describe procedures for constructing discords by the ‘method of concordance’ and for assessing the size of the perfect fourth (55.3–58.5). All the rest, amounting to nearly twelve pages, takes the form of a series of long digressions, concerned with the concepts that must be brought to bear on the subject if it is to be properly understood, and with the methods by which its theses are to be established and expounded. (These are at 32.10–34.34, 38.27–44.20 and 47.8–50.14; the first two are subdivided into two and three separate ‘digressions’ respectively.)