Table of Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations
Series Editors' Foreword
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
About the Companion Website

PRELUDE: Listening to the Universe
PART ONE: The Framework
1. Harmonizing the World: Natural Philosophy and Order
2. Knowing the World: Music, Mathematics, and Physics
PART TWO: The Particulars
3. Composing the Human: Harmonies of the Microcosm
4. Hearing the World: Sonic Materialisms
5. Composing the Cosmic: Harmonies of the Macrocosm
POSTLUDE: The Musical Aesthetics of a World So Composed

Appendix One: William of Conches, Glosulae de magno Prisciano
Appendix Two: Hisdosus, De anima mundi Platonica
Works Cited
Index

About the Author

Andrew Hicks is an Assistant Professor of Music and Medieval Studies at Cornell University, a member of the graduate fields of Classics and Near Eastern Studies, and a faculty affiliate in Religious Studies. His scholarship clusters around the intellectual history of musical thought from a cross-disciplinary perspective that embraces philosophical, cosmological, scientific, and grammatical discourse in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and spans the linguistic
and cultural spheres of Latin, Greek, Persian, and Arabic.

Reviews

"The main objective of this volume is highly innovative and stimulating... Hicks' essay is a very accurate study of Harmony in the Medieval Platonic Cosmos, and is going to become a must for future researchers in a field that includes a number of disciplines with different epistemological statutes." -- Letterio Mauro, Università di Genova, Greek and Roman Musical Studies
"written from a multidisciplinary perspective that includes musicology, philosophy, and history of science ... the inspiration Hicks's book provides to reflect on the place of music in historical and contemporary ways of world-making." -- Jacomien Prins, Isis
"With remarkable erudition and wide-ranging curiosity, Andrew Hicks brings new illumination to medieval cosmological, philosophical, and musical writings about the harmony of the world, giving fresh and bold readings to many texts, especially many previously in the shadows. Written with verve, his book is a scholarly tour de force that will be a valuable resource for all who are interested in the deep history of cosmic harmony."--Peter Pesic, author of
Music and the Making of Modern Science, director of the Science Institute at St. John's College, Santa Fe, NM
"Hicks's book is required reading, not just for historians of music and cosmology, but for everyone interested in medieval thought, because it shows twelfth-century philosophy in a new light."--John Marenbon, Senior Research Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge and Honorary Professor of Medieval Philosophy in the University of Cambridge
"Composing the World makes a distinct contribution to the scholarship in medieval studies; there is no other work on this topic that can compare in terms of depth, scope, and complexity. This book is likely to become an indispensable point of reference for the study of both medieval musical theory and the school of Chartres. The book displays great command of the rich and daunting scholarship on the topic and, especially in chapters four and five, offers
persuasive, new solutions to longstanding exegetical issues." --Bryn Mawr Classical Review
"This ambitious book opens a new window onto twelfth-century philosophical thought, and successfully shows how deeply Platonic conceptions of harmony were embedded within it. As well as becoming essential reading for medievalists who want to develop their knowledge of speculative music theory, it is also worth the attention of early modernists and scholars who focus on present-day philosophical and scientific thought." -- British Journal for the History of
Science
"Andrew H's `Composing the World` is a well-written and informative work. It was
undoubtedly a courageous and imaginative decision to embark on a study of the
notion of cosmic harmony in twelfth-century Latin sources, since a successful outcome
could only be achieved by someone who combines many skills including not
only musicology but medieval Latin philology and paleography, not without some
acquaintance with the histories of philosophy and science ... Andrew H. is obviously a person of great intelligence and already of considerable learning. It seems to me that with his range of expertise he is adding greatly, and could presumably so add in the future, to medieval musicology and medieval studies more generally." --Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch
"Andrew Hicks has been so bold as to add a new book about world harmony, the
music of the spheres, and the medieval reception of the Pythagorean concept of a creation organised according to musical principles to the already existing wealth
of scholarship ... Hicks has chosen an approach which is new and refreshing, and
which goes far beyond the boundaries of what already exists on the subject." --Plainsong & Medieval Music
"Composing the World is itself well-composed -- its chapters flow, despite their many long
citations from the works under discussion. As the book is very much about these texts, most readers will be glad of this florilegium ... Hicks has done a wonderful job of making a complex subject and its somewhat forbidding texts accessible and of drawing out their importance and relevance to manifold wider concerns." --Speculum
"Hicks writes towards the beginning of his book that, if we neglect the natural philosophers
of the twelfth century, 'we have done ourselves and the discipline of musicology a grand
disservice' (p. 8). By bringing a musicological perspective to his engagement with these natural philosophers, he enriches our understanding of the twelfth century's musical speculation and raises new questions that broaden musicology itself." --Music and Letters