It has been said that Pythagoras discovered the perfect musical intervals by chance when he heard sounds of hammers striking an anvil at a nearby smithy. The sounds corresponded to the same intervals Pythagoras had been studying. He experimented with various instruments and apparatus to confirm what he heard. Math, and in particular, numbers are connected to music, he concluded. The discovery of musical intervals and the icon of the musical blacksmith have been familiar tropes in history, referenced in literary, musical, and visual arts. Countless authors since Antiquity have written about the story of the discovery, most often found in theoretical texts about music. However, modern scholarship has judged the narrative as a myth and a fabrication. Its refutation of the story is peculiar because modern scholarship has failed to disprove the nature of Pythagoras’s discovery with valid physical explanations. This report examines the structural elements of the story and traces its evolution since Antiquity to the early modern period to explain how an author interprets the narrative and why modern scholarship has deemed it a legend. The case studies of Nicomachus of Gerasa, Claudius Ptolemy, Boethius, and Marin Mersenne reveal not only how the story about Pythagoras’s discovery functions for each author, but also how the alterations in each version uncover an author’s views on music. / text

Acompanha 1 anexo: L'Orfeo favola in musica, de Claudio Monteverdi / Orientador: Eduardo Augusto Ostergen / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Artes / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-12T16:57:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Rocha_AbelLuisBernardoda_D.pdf: 9114279 bytes, checksum: 2529bd2853d709dbe5436634ed75c5ab (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / Resumo: Este trabalho tem por objetivo apresentar a realização de uma PARTITURA CONTEMPORÂNEA DE EXECUÇÃO da ópera L'Orfeo - Favola in Musica, de Claudio Monteverdi, composta em 1607, apresentada aqui como uma transcrição historicamente informada, sugerindo a utilização de uma mescla de recursos e instrumentos contemporâneos combinados àqueles específicos da prática musical do repertório setecentista. Tal realização embasou-se na teoria e prática musical do século XVII. Num primeiro momento, foi realizada a análise da linguagem harmônica de Claudio Monteverdi, especialmente empregada nesta ópera, tomada dentro da prática musical sua contemporânea, a partir de tratados teóricos da época, de escritos de Monteverdi e críticas à sua obra. Numa segunda parte, estudaram-se as necessidades técnicas e estéticas para realizar a transcrição da partitura original e a recuperação do significado simbólico dessa linguagem harmônica. E, finalmente, apresenta os passos de construção de uma dentre várias possíveis orquestrações contemporâneas, com sugestões de soluções orquestrais modernas que visam a recuperação dos significados dramáticos sugeridos pela escrita de Monteverdi, sugerindo um conjunto de recursos expressivos, que possam incutir no público de nosso século os afetos de "terror" e "piedade", como definidos na teoria clássica do teatro. / Abstract: The purpose of this study is to present a modern realization of the orchestral score of Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo - Favola in Musica, originally written in 1607. It is presented here as a historically informed transcription, suggesting the use of a mix of contemporary instrumental resources and tools combined with those specific to practices of the seventeenth century. As an initial step, an analysis of the specific harmonic language employed by Claudio Monteverdi in L'Orfeo was done, approached from within his own contemporary musical practice and writings and based on theoretical treatises of the time as well as criticisms of his work. In a second part, technical and aesthetic needs to perform the transcription of the original orchestral score and the recovery of the symbolic significance of this harmonic language are studied as well. At last, it presents steps for the contemporary elaboration of one of the many possible orchestrations of this work proposing modern orchestral solutions that seek the recovery of specific meanings suggested by the dramatic writing of Monteverdi, a suggestive set of expressive resources that can instill in our contemporary public the affects of "terror" and "mercy" as defined in the classical theory of theater. / Doutorado / Doutor em Música

This thesis deals with ancient string and percussion instruments with additional focus on a hydraulic organ, an instrument that is difficult to categorize. The first part of the thesis is a follow-up to the bachelor thesis Wind Instruments of Ancient Greece and Rome, which is devoted to wind instruments, and deals with the classification, description and evolution of the instruments of the other two instrumental groups. This is illustrated on the background of literary, archaeological and iconographic sources, especially on the vase painting. Vase painting well demonstrates the shape, evolution and regional occurrence of these instruments. In the second part of this thesis the Attic and southern Italy vase paintings will be used to compare musical culture in both of these areas. In Attic music scenes the chronological evolution of depicted instruments is examined, while in southern Italian scenes we will concentrate on the differences of depicted instruments in the regions of Campania, Lucania, Sicily, Paestum and Apulia. Finally, the Attic musical instruments are compared with the instruments of southern Italy. The results of the analyses will be entered into graphs. Keywords: ancient music, strings instruments, percussion instruments, Greece, Southern Italy, Campania, Lucania, Apulia, Sicily,...