Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance

Keywords: Keywords: Modulation, Music, Order, Reason, Saint Augustine, Scientia, Transcendence.

The objective of this work is to analyse the use of the term Scientia in the definition of Music proposed by Saint Augustine in the work De Musica (I, IV, 5). The Music, one of the seven Liberal Arts, was understood by Augustine as a manifestation of th order of audible realities. The Music had as its object not exactly modulatio, but bona modulatio. Many animals are capable of modulation, they fellow numerical laws: but, for Saint Augustine, the Music was a Scientia bene modulandi, and it assumed a specific, transcendent telos (τέλος). The term Scientia could not be dispensed with, since ignorance of the bona modulatio, as an exercise of Reason, could cause disorder in the use of song.