Theory, Aesthetics, Devotion

Abstract To city dwellers, the concept of musica held variable meaning, ranging from the practice of reading, performing, and composing music, through the desirable qualities of such sound, to the more rarefied speculations of the philosophically oriented. This intellectual basis of the art was, at first glance, the element least specific to a given place, undergirded as it was by widespread strains of thought variable in their mixture of medieval and modem philosophy. The immediately theoretical works consisted of treatises on musica practica, while issues of musica speculativa arose in writings of Puteanus and in Federigo Borromeo’s own notes. A generation later, Teodoro Osio’s arithmetical speculations appeared as two published works, and several related manuscripts, on number, meter, and music.