The Early Modern Period: 1500–1800

Abstract

Modern philosophy of music emerged from the revival of ancient philosophy of music in the Renaissance and music took its place among the fine arts. Old views about the music of the cosmos persisted but debated centred on music’s relationship to emotion. Rationalists believed that the soul responds with sympathetic vibration to musical harmonies. Empiricists, beginning with the Florentine Camerata, revived the resemblance theory of musical expressiveness and held that music resembles human expressive behaviour. Both schools waned in the eighteenth century, and formalism emerged. Writers discussed include Gioseffo Zarlino, Franchino Gaffurio, Johannes Kepler, Heinrich Glarean, Athanasius Kircher, Joachim Burmeister, René Descartes, Marin Mersenne, Jean-Pierre de Crousaz, Johann Philipp Kirnberger, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann David Heinichen, Yves-Marie André, Francis Hutcheson, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Charles Batteux, Jean-Baptiste Du Bos, Rousseau, Denis Diderot, Heinrich Christoph Koch, Kant, Johann Mattheson, Johann Gottfried Herder, Christian Gottfried Körner, Alexander Malcolm, Charles Avison, Charley Burney, James Beattie, Thomas Reid, Thomas Robertson and Adam Smith.