• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: Ad infinitum : Numbers and Series in Early Modern Music Theory
  • Contributor: Grant, Roger Mathew
  • Published: University of California Press, 2013
  • Published in: Music Theory Spectrum, 35 (2013) 1, Seite 62-76
  • Language: English
  • DOI: 10.1525/mts.2013.35.1.62
  • ISSN: 0195-6167; 1533-8339
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: Descriptions and explanations of the harmonic series changed dramatically over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These changes in music theoretical knowledge were intimately tied to conceptual developments in the mathematics of the era. During this period, the concepts of number and pitch slowly transformed from discrete quantities to continuous quantities. These new understandings of quantity were as much involved in theories of consonance and descriptions of the harmonic series as they were entangled in the debating of metaphysical systems. Through a detailed study of these intertwined concepts, this article assesses a reorientation of music theory’s metaphysics from Zarlino to Euler.