| This study argues that no significant interaction occurred between music and humanism or musicians and humanists during the early Renaissance (ca. 1360-1450). It further argues that the best explanation of that fact lies in the classical and medieval relationship between music and philosophy and in the evolutions of philosophy and rhetoric as independent, sometimes antagonistic, traditions.;At least as early as the Greek sophists there is evidence of important epistemological and methodological differences between philosophers (especially natural philosophers) and rhetoricians. Those differences were aggravated and crystallized by the Roman orators, among whom Cicero was most important, and by the medieval system of liberal arts.;When, in the early Renaissance, humanists successfully restored the values of classical rhetoric, they rejected at the same time the value of the classical and medieval philosophical tradition to which music had become attached. One effect of the rise of humanism was, therefore, a polarization of the values of philosophers and rhetoricians which effectively insulated musicians from humanists even when together at the same court or under the same patron. To this phenomenon may be added other related and supportive factors such as social, geographic, and educational differences all of which prevented the interaction of musical and humanistic thought.;Nevertheless, some historians, many of whom are musicologists, have been eager to find evidence that humanism influenced music of the period. Their eagerness may be explained by the popularity of zeitgeist assumptions among many cultural historians together with an inadequate understanding of the meaning and nature of Renaissance humanism which has led to a widespread overestimation of the importance of humanism. They have, in the process neglected the evidence which Renaissance music provides that all that was worthwhile in the Renaissance was not necessarily humanistic.;From Mesopotamia the Greeks received various notions concerning the numerological, astrological, and cosmological significance of the ratios of certain musical intervals. These beliefs are generally referred to as celestial harmony. The doctrines of celestial harmony became increasingly attached to the institutions and disciplines of philosophy, particularly so in the writings of Pythagoras and Plato and in the medieval writings of Boethius. |
