Article ID: CBB854514897

Music and Mathematics: A Case Study in the History of Science (2016)

unapi

The Italian musical theorist and lutenist Vincenzo Galilei (1522?-1591), father of Galileo Galilei, held a life-long dispute with Gioseffo Zarlino (1517-1590), the famous theorist and capellmeister of San Marcos, in Venice. Daniel. P Walker and Claude V. Palisca - historians of science and music, respectively - thoroughly analyzed this dispute calling the attention to some quantitative aspects of music theory found in Galilei’s work. These scholars understood the dispute as mainly opposing experimentalism (Galilei) to speculative mathematical reasoning (Zarlino). In the present article we suggest an alternative interpretation for this dispute based on newly found manuscripts by Galilei, according to which the dispute had more to do with the ideas Galilei had of science in general and the role played by arithmetic, geometry and sound in music.

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB854514897/

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Authors & Contributors
Bromberg, Carla
Bellissima, Fabio
Liu, Yaya
Frank, Martin
Boccadoro, Brenno
Villegas Guillén, Salvador
Concepts
Music theory
Music
Mathematics
Harmony (music theory)
Arithmetic
Geometry
Time Periods
16th century
Renaissance
17th century
Early modern
Medieval
Ancient
Places
Italy
Turin (Italy)
Greece
Europe
China
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