Aristoxenus

Aristoxenus of Tarentum was a Greek philosopher and music theorist of the Peripatetic school, born in Tarentum, in Magna Graecia in southern Italy. He is best remembered for music: his treatise is the chief surviving source on ancient Greek musical theory, although most of his work has been lost.

He was born into a musical family; his father, Spintharus, was a learned musician with a Pythagorean background, and he taught him music. Aristoxenus then studied with Lamprus of Erythrae and with the Pythagorean Xenophilus before becoming a pupil of Aristotle. According to the Suda, he turned against Aristotle after his death, when Theophrastus rather than he was chosen to lead the school, a post he himself seems to have wanted. Other sources, such as Aristocles, say he always spoke of Aristotle with respect, so the story should be treated with caution.

His writings were said to number four hundred and fifty-three books on philosophy, ethics and music, but almost all survive only as titles and fragments. The exception is the incomplete Elements of Harmony, in three books, along with remnants of a work on rhythm and metre.

His central contribution was to argue that musical intervals should be judged by the ear rather than by mathematical ratios, as the Pythagoreans held. He organised music into parts, among them genera, intervals, sounds, systems, modes, mutations and melopoeia, and held that musical knowledge rests on perception and memory. His empirical approach was debated and developed by later theorists, and it shaped the long history of Western music theory.