Music as Divine Order
Read MoreFirst published in 1503, this influential encyclopaedia by Gregor Reisch demonstrates the way music had since ancient times been conceived in relation to mathematics. Arranged in sections according to the seven liberal arts, music is grouped together with three other mathematical subjects: arithmetic, geometry and astronomy (the remaining three being grammar, logic, and rhetoric). This edition contains woodcuts with allegorical representations for each of the seven disciplines.
The frontispiece of Reisch's work depicts Nicostrata, the supposed inventor of the Latin alphabet, bearing a placard displaying the alphabet to a young student. Her left hand unlocks the door to the tower labelled triclinium philosophiae (the banquet of philosophy). The tower’s first two floors symbolise the teaching of grammar whilst upper floors relate to other liberal arts: the third represents logic, rhetoric and poetry, the fourth is labelled music, geometry and astronomy. The top of the tower is devoted to theology or metaphysics.
Author: Gregor Reisch
Title: Margarita philosophica [Pearl of wisdom] (Basel, 1583)
Shelfmark: C.14.24
Provenance: Gift of Edward Martin, President of Queens’ College 1631.
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