On MusicAugustine

Augustine wrote De Musica in six books between 387 and 391. The first five are a technical treatise on meter and rhythm, working through the rules of Latin verse with the patience of a grammarian. The sixth book transforms the entire project. It ascends from the rhythms of syllables to the rhythms of the soul, from the perception of beauty in sound to the source of beauty itself.

Augustine distinguishes five kinds of rhythm: sounding rhythms in bodies, rhythms of sensation, rhythms of memory, rhythms produced by the active mind, and judicial rhythms by which the soul evaluates what it hears. Each level is higher than the last because it is less dependent on matter and closer to the mind's own activity. The soul does not passively receive beauty from bodies; it recognizes in sensible proportions a reflection of the intelligible order it carries within itself.

The sixth book is, in effect, a treatise on aesthetics grounded in the metaphysics of participation. Beautiful sounds please because they exhibit number and proportion, and number and proportion originate in God. Augustine does not argue that art is unimportant. He argues that its importance points beyond itself.