A brief intro to Aristoxenus, and Elementa Harmonica
Aristoxenus of Tarentum was one of the foremost philosophers of his time. Although he authored upwards of 453 books during his lifetime covering topics beyond the realm of music, his treatise on harmony, Elementa Harmonica, isn't only arguably his most important contribution to the music theory of his time, but it's also one of the most important insights we have to music from Greek antiquity.
Over the span of the three books that make up the treatise, in comparison to Greek theorists that preceded him, Aristoxenus wrote about theory from a "practicality-first" perspective. By no means does he entirely do away with the mathematical principles that informed his practice; however, there seems to be a stronger emphasis on whether or not any theoretical pitch material is pragmatic to the practicing musician.
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My attempt to introduce Aristoxenus' theories
Because this website is now dedicated to the entire treatise, I want to start off by saying that the original inspiration is a particular section from Elementa Harmonica where Aristoxenus describes the differences of the genera. If you have no previous experience with Greek music theory (like me before reading 😔), you might find the treatise to be challenging to grasp because of the very stream of conscious driven style, as well as the core vocabulary that Aristoxenus assumes the reader knows. The rest of this article is going to attempt to explain some of what I think are the biggest takeaways from this section. But first, let's cover some key terms as they are referenced in and around the excerpt.
Another important tidbit is that I'm using a particular translation of the treatise, The Harmonics of Aristoxenus authored by Henry S. Macran. I'll be including page numbers, which are specific to this book. It has detailed notation and a hefty notes section that explains a lot of what I'm going to attempt to explain here.
As far as the structure of the rest of the webpages devoted to each of the 3 books are concerned, I'm going to include quotes from the translation that I found particularly meaningful to Aristoxenus' overall message, as well as some of my own commentary. Instead of a table of contents, I'm using color coding and a legend to help you identify quotes related to themes from the summary.