Transition Note - 5. Music, Temperament, and Social Concord
From The Observatory
Query: 5. Music, Temperament, and Social Concord
Transition Note
Quoted text:
What kind of creation? This question brings us back to the ultimate purpose of art. What was being expressed was a re-creation not of the artist’s personal experience but something more universal—the kosmos. Antiquity’s major public ceremonies were kosmos-renewing, and it was at these ceremonies that music was most pronounced. The celestial movements of the planets were emulated in song, dance, and instrumental playing (harps or lyres and flutes).
[Omitted text: “Whatever could be measured by number was standardized.”]
[Omitted text: “What once seemed to be realistic representational art now is perceived as reflecting a cosmological iconography.”]
Chapter 16 of Athenaeus’s Banquet of the Sophists dealt largely with the role of music in banquets and related occasions. He reported that:
Originally here there were two short paragraphs that did not fit and needed explication and transitions. Could you help us work them in?
The paragraphs were:
“Whatever could be measured by number was standardized.”
“What once seemed to be realistic representational art now is perceived as reflecting a cosmological iconography.”
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