excerpts from Augustine's De Musica (Books I-V), his never-finished treatise on music--proposing that Augustine's discourse on poetic rhythm could correspond to "flow" in hiphop if music historians stop using him as a punching bag (hint, Ted Gioia)

The single most important problem with Ted Gioia's Music: A Subversive History with respect to Augustine of Hippo is he never quotes Augustine. He also never mentions that  Augustine's treatise on music was never finished. Augustine is merely collapsed into Gioia's patently pejorative take on Pythagoras and the entirety of all Pythagorean and quasi-Pythagorean or neo-Pythagorean conceptions of music as Gioia takes them to be over the last 2,500 years.  Well, let's at least quote Augustine and associated scholarship to give people a chance to decide what they think.  Just because we might not endorse a post-Pythagorean neo-Platonic cosmology in which the divinely ordered cosmos is full of musical resonance that can be replicated or imitated in human music doesn't mean we can't at least disagree with Augustine for what he says rather than by way of some person telling us what to think about Augustine without ever quoting him.  

On Music
The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation (Volume 4)
Augustine, translated by Robert Catesby Taliaferro
Copyright © 1947 by Ludwig Schopp
ISBN-10 : 0-8132-1319-3
ISBN-13 : 978-0813213194
 
From the Introduction
Pages 153-154
But if these six books On Music are only a fragment of a projected cycle on the liberal arts, they are, also, only a fragment of a larger treatise on music. They are, in the words of Augustine `only such as pertain to that part called Rhythm.’ Much later, in writing to Bishop Memorius, he speaks of having written six books on Rhythm and of having intended to write six more on Melody (de melo). As we shall see, this intended part would have been a treatise on Harmonics.
 
It is necessary, for the understanding of these books on Rhythm, to know what the ancients meant by music, by rhythm, and by melody. It is true St. Augustine tells us that, of these six books, the first five on rhythm and meter are trivial and childish, but this is a rhetorical statement to introduce us to the more serious business of the sixth book on the hierarchy of numbers as constitutive of the soul, the universe, and the angels. …

So the introduction establishes something we need to know, Augustine never finished De Musica as he originally envisioned it.  And ... 
 

Pages 154-155
 
It is usually dangerous procedure to ignore the technical details a thinker uses to test or suggest his general and more reductive theories.  It is too easy to overlook the first five books and to concentrate on the sixth. It would seem necessary, rather, to place these five technical books in the general picture of the theory of ancient music, and to try and read from the Augustinian variations on the ancient themes the intentions of his mind and doctrine. 

Which is another way of warning us that when we read Augustine we should be wary of skimming a la Scott Pilgrim and pay attention to why Augustine devotes so much time to what he will himself concede is punishingly rudimentary and tedious stuff.  Definitions are important and so we'll start at the beginning, sort of:
 

On Music
BOOK I
Page 172
…
M. Music is the science of mensurating well. Doesn’t it seem so to you?
 
D. It might seem so, if it were clear to me what mensuration is.
…
Page 173
…
M. Don’t let this disturb you, that, as you just said, in all things made, music included, measure must be observed, and yet that this is called mensuration in music.   …
 
M. For you to understand that mensuration can regard music alone, while measure, from which the word is derived, can also be in other things. In the same way diction is properly attributed to orators, although anyone who speaks says something, and diction gets its name from saying.  …
 
Page 174
M. Then, mensuration is not improperly called a certain skill in moving, or at any rate that by which something is made to move well. For we can’t say anything moves well unless it keeps its measure.
…
Pages 175-176
M. Music is the science of moving well. But that is because whatever moves and keeps harmoniously the measuring of times and intervals can already be said to move well.  For it is already pleasing, and for this reason is already properly called mensuration. Yet it is possible for this harmony and measuring to please when they shouldn’t.  For example, if one should sing sweetly and dance gracefully, wishing there-by to be gay when the occasion demanded gravity, such a person would in no way be using harmonious mensuration well. In other words, that person uses ill or improperly the motion at one time called good because of its harmony. And so it is one thing to mensurate, and another to mensurate well.

Music in the ancient world was seen as an extension of the sciences of measurement, whether astrology (astronomy) geometry, or arithmetic. That Augustine became ambivalent or skeptical about the value of studying the sciences of measurement might have had something to do with a conviction that these things were so tied to divinatory practices he regarded as idolatrous should not be completely cast aside.  Augustine famously was ambivalent about music and felt it was bad if he enjoyed the sound of a singer's voice singing a song more than the lyrical/textual content of the song itself (Confessions) Augustine, as we'll see very soon, believed that reason (a.k.a. the intellect) was important for even defining what music was.  
 

Page 178
M. But don’t you think art is a sort of reason, and those who use art use reason? Or do you think otherwise?
 
D. It seems so.
 
M. Therefore, whoever cannot use reason does not use art. 
 
Page 179
M. … But if all imitation is art, and all art reason, all imitation is reason. But an irrational animal does not use reason; therefore, it does not possess an art. But it is capable of imitation; therefore art is not imitation.
 
Page 185
…
M. Then tell me, which is to be considered dearer, what is contained in our intellect or what is accidentally attributed to us by the judgment of an ignorant people?
 
D. No one doubts the first is far above all others, even those things which are not to be thought ours.
 
M. And so you don’t deny, do you, all science is contained in the intellect?
 
D. Who does?
 
M. And, therefore, music is in the intellect.
 
D. That seems to follow from its definition.
…

But this should not be construed as Augustine advocating some egghead pure-theory notion of music.  Ted Gioia mentioned that the Latin word for number even shows up in De Musica, and it does, but we just saw earlier that Augustine had his master tell the disciple that playing a joyful tune at a funeral would not be proper mensuration.  Social context clearly has a role to play in what Augustine's master and disciple in De Musica regard as genuinely musical. Nothing about music as the science of mensurating well precludes the social or communal element. The role the intellect has to play can't just be sloughed off to some corner.  It has to do with recognizing something as pleasing to begin with, at least where human evaluation is concerned:
 

Page 200
M. … And it is now time you learn how important this thing is, because the unity you love can be effected in ordered things by that alone whose name in Greek is analogia and which some of our writers have called proportion.

Now Books II through V are where Augustine gets genuinely tedious but I'm going to quote somewhat extensively from him anyway. We need to see for ourselves that Augustine's De Musica is a study in rhythm and a study in poetic rhythm in particular.  In a cultural and musical context within which any music is subordinate to speech (think of songs) the rhythm of language is a necessary preliminary to discussing melody or harmony (the previously alluded to aspects of De Musica Augustine never got around to writing about)

So with that caveat in mind ... let's slog through some passages of Augustine, shall we? 

BOOK II
Page 237
 
…
D. I now understand, and I agree a certain combination of feet can be made in which it is fixed just how many feet the progression is to be, before it starts over again.
 
Page 238
M. Then, since it’s proper for things distinct from each other to be distinguished by names, it’s well to learn the first kind of combination is called rhythm by the Greeks; the second, meter. In Latin they could be called, the first, number (numerus); the second, measure (mensio or mensura). …
 
Page 239
 
M. … And so all meter is rhythm, but not all rhythm is meter.
 
BOOK IV
Pages 291-292
M. … For reason certainly teaches some meters are established as immobile, that is, where nothing should be changed, as in this one we have just talked about; others as mobile, where one may substitute certain feet for others …
 
Page 294
 
But, with regard to the composition of meters, it is enough at present to see diverse meters can be joined together so long as they agree with respect to beat …
 
BOOK V
Page 297
M. The controversy among ancient learned men in their attempt to find out what verse is, has been great and not without fruit. For the subject has been discovered and written down for the knowledge of posterity, and has been confirmed, not only by serious and certain authority, but also by reason. Now they n9oticed there is a difference between rhythm and meter, so all meter is rhythm but not all rhythm meter. For every composition of feet is numerable, since the composition containing meter cannot not be number, that is not be rhythm. But, since it is not the same thing to roll forward, although in legitimate feet, yet without any definite end, and to progress likewise in legitimate feet, but to be bounded by a fixed end, these kinds, therefore, had to be distinguished by names. So the first was called only by the name proper to it, rhythm, but the other by meter as well as rhythm. Again, since of those numbers bounded by a definite end, that is of meters, there are some where there is no ratio of division within them, and others where there certainly is, this difference also had to be noted in ames. And so the kind of rhythm where this ratio is not has been properly called meter; where it is, they have named it verse.  And reason will perhaps show us the origin of this name as we go on. …
 
Page 300
M. And so, five and seven half-feet divide into two parts, the heroic verse consisting, as everyone knows, of six four-time feet.  And without the harmonious conjunction of two numbers, either this one, or some other, there is no verse. And in all these examples reason has shown this much must be observed: the first part cannot be second, nor the second first. And if it is otherwise they will no longer be called verses except through misuse of the name. But they will have rhythm and meter, and it is not improper to stick in such things at long intervals in long poems composed of verses.  …  whatever is made up of two members, neither able to be put in the place of the other without violating the law of numbers, is called verse because it cannot be reversed.
 
Pages 303 to 304
M. Let us keep these laws unchanged, then, if you will, that a verse should not be without a partition into two numbers approaching equality, as this one is Cornua velatarum obvertimus antennarum. That this equality should not make the members convertible, so to speak, as it does in Cornua velatarum vertimus antennarum.  And when this convertibility is avoided, that the numbers should not have too great a discrepancy between them, but nearly equal each other, as much as possible by proximate numbers, not to say that they can be divided such a way, eight half-feet are in the first member … and four in the last …
 
D. Well, I see there are twelve half-feet, and the members cannot each have six half-feet, because convertibility must be avoided. Nor is it proper for there to be a great discrepancy between them as in three and nine or nine and three. Nor would an even number of half feet be given the second member, resulting in a division of eight and four or four and eight, and a verse ending with a full foot. The division must be made into five and seven or seven and five. For these numbers are both odd and proximate, and the members certainly approach each other more nearly than they would in the numbers four and eight.

Now in Ted Gioia's thinking Augustine reduced music to numbers and counting but what I see here more accurately corresponds to a discourse on poetry and poetic rhythm in Latin. Augustine has his master and disciple talking about the tediously detailed technical points of how rhythm is within meter but not all rhythm is meter for a reason.  The divinely ordained numbers and so on do, indeed, appear in Book VI but I want to highlight something about all of the above, I propose that the musical concept from the 21st century that most plausibly maps onto what Augustine has been talking about could be "flow" in hiphop.  I might also mention that a great big monkey wrench in Ted Gioia claiming Augustine as a pro-Pythagorean enemy of magic (which Augustine would have been against) or Augustine as part of the Europe (Greece?) vs Africa duality is the simple fact that church historians have long listed Augustine as one of the greatest of the African bishops in the early Christian church.  To be rather blunt, Gioia conscripting Augustine as some kind of symbolic enemy of African thought about music would be laugh out loud funny if I didn't get a sense that Gioia makes the implicit claim with full sincerity. 

I did enjoy reading Gioia's Music: A Subversive History while I was reading it for literary flair, but as history?  It was often frustrating.  His errors on ancient literature and Greek tuning systems and Augustine were so cringe-inducing it was hard to draw a line through the points he actually basically got right.  Kyle Gann's book dismantled Gioia's myths about Pythagoras and Greek debates about tuning systems a bit more than a month before Gioia's book came out.  But it's Augustine that I'm taking time to discuss because of the various historical figures Gioia discusses, his handling of Augustine is one of the more egregious misrepresentations in his history.  I, eh, know someone who has broached that topic elsewhere but I've been meaning to blog about Augustine's De Musica here for a while as it is.

I think that we can, even if we don't agree with all or any of Augustine's ideas, take a non-pejorative approach to his work.  Taking the first five books of his never-finished treatise seriously could lead us to creatively read (or misread, if we're going to get all Bloom about this or Stuart Hall "decoding" about stuff) Augustine's writings on music and poetic rhythm as a possible bridge.  To put it more plainly, I was reading about how people at Mars Hill attempted to make a hiphop musical culture within the now defunct church.  I am not exactly a hiphop fan myself but I like to read music history and music theory and I think that proposing that Augustine's De Musica as a treatise on rhythm concerned with "flow" is a plausible proposal. If the first of the Western Church Fathers to write anything about music dealt with the technical issues of "flow" then that should be relevant to Christians, at least, in the contemporary West who want to have any kind of discussion or debate about what are colloquially known as "worship wars".  I can try to get to Book VI later but for the point I've been trying to make actually quoting Books I through V is far more important.