Music and the Scientific Revolution
Read MoreBenedetti challenged orthodoxy further by means of the musical examples displayed here. Through them, he correctly argued that it was impossible for both the harmony and melody of a musical work to proceed according to intervals that are at all times both musically pure and mathematically perfect. The conflicts that always arise between melodic steps and harmonic intervals require musicians to make occasional adjustments to interval sizes. In contrast to those who expected musical art to conform to number, Benedetti realised that this was not always possible.
Author: Giovanni Battista Benedetti
Title: Diversarum speculationum mathematicarum, & physicarum liber [Book of various mathematical and physical ideas] (Turin, 1585)
Shelfmark: D.1.26
Provenance: Gift of John St George, Queens’ Fellow (1570s)
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