Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Aristoxenus

Aristoxenus, of Tarentum, a philosopher and musician, lived about three hundred and fifty years before Jesus Christ. He is said to have written four hundred and fifty-three volumes ; hut there are only now extant three volumes of his "Harmonic Elements," which is the oldest musical work at present known.

Aristoxenus was born at Tarentum, a city in that 'part of Italy called Magna Graecia, (now Calabria.) He lived in the time of Alexander the Great, and subsequently, viz., about A. M. 3610. He held it was absurd to aim at an artificial accuracy in gratifying the ear beyond its own power of distinction! That he had anticipated the satisfactory discoveries of modern ages by his doctrine, is sufficiently clear nowadays, although a distinguished ancient, Cicero, ("De Finibus,") speaking of the elements of Aristoxenus, pronounces them as utterly unintelligible. We should not wonder at this ignorance, when we find people in our own time asserting the existence of quarter tones, &c., in our subdivision of the octave, seeing that it can be plainly proved we cannot, for practical utility, adopt any other system than twelve semitones in the said octave. Hence the best writers use D# and E b indiscriminately, just as the doigt� of the respective instruments requires for the sake of facility. Nobody will doubt that Mozart, Weber, Spohr, &c., are musicians ; and yet their works, particularly those of the last, abound in conflicting notation.