Early Christian writers often use musical metaphors. In particular, in the opening chapter of Clemens of Alexandria’s Protrepticus Christ is presented as the ‘new song’ (ᾆσμα καινόν) which brings order and harmony to the universe. This paper aims to demonstrate that there is more to this image than a display of rhetorical ability: Clemens’ vocabulary and the way in which he describes the different steps of the tuning process show that he was aware of music theory and conceived of the action of the divine logos as the making of a real musical scale, perhaps not very different from the ones used by the musicians of his time.
ARTIFICIO RETORICO O SAPERE MUSICALE? L’ACCORDATURA DEL COSMO IN CLEMENTE ALESSANDRINO, PROTRETTICO, 1, 5, 1-2
Massimo Raffa
2017-01-01
Abstract
Early Christian writers often use musical metaphors. In particular, in the opening chapter of Clemens of Alexandria’s Protrepticus Christ is presented as the ‘new song’ (ᾆσμα καινόν) which brings order and harmony to the universe. This paper aims to demonstrate that there is more to this image than a display of rhetorical ability: Clemens’ vocabulary and the way in which he describes the different steps of the tuning process show that he was aware of music theory and conceived of the action of the divine logos as the making of a real musical scale, perhaps not very different from the ones used by the musicians of his time.| File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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