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Early Christian writers often use musical metaphors. In particular, in the opening chapter of Clemens of Alexandria's Protrepticus Christ is presented as the 'new son (ᾀ̃σμα καινόν) which brings order and harmony to the universe. This paper aims to demonstrate that there is more to this image than a display of rhetorical ability: Clemens' vocabulary and the way in which he describes the different steps of the tuning process show that he was aware of music theory and conceived of the action of the divine logos as the making of a real musical scale, perhaps not very different from the ones used by the musicians of his time.

This book endeavours to pinpoint the relations between musical, and especially instrumental, practice and the evolving conceptions of pitch systems. It traces the development of ancient melodic notation from reconstructed origins, through various adaptations necessitated by changing musical styles and newly invented instruments, to its final canonical form. It thus emerges how closely ancient harmonic theory depended on the culturally dominant instruments, the lyre and the aulos. These threads are followed down to late antiquity, when details recorded by Ptolemy permit an exceptionally clear view. Dr Hagel discusses the textual and pictorial evidence, introducing mathematical approaches wherever feasible, but also contributes to the interpretation of instruments in the archaeological record and occasionally is able to outline the general features of instruments not directly attested. The book will be indispensable to all those interested in Greek music, technology and performance culture and the general history of musicology.

Text and Act, a collection of essays and reviews published over the last dozen years, offers a brilliant evaluation of the early music movement, transforming the debate about `early music' and `authenticity'. Taking a wide-ranging cultural view of the phenomenon, Taruskin shows that the movement, far from reviving ancient traditions, in fact represents the only truly modern style of performance on offer today, and is therefore far more valuable and authentic than the historical verisimilitude it ostensibly aims at could ever be.

The science called 'harmonics' was one of the major intellectual enterprises of Greek antiquity. Ptolemy's treatise seeks to invest it with new scientific rigour; its consistently sophisticated procedural self-awareness marks it as a key text in the history of science. This book is a sustained methodological exploration of Ptolemy's project. After an analysis of his explicit pronouncements on the science's aims and the methods appropriate to it, it examines Ptolemy's conduct of his investigation in detail, concluding that despite occasional uncertainties, the declared procedure is followed with remarkable fidelity. Ptolemy pursues tenaciously his novel objective of integrating closely the project's theoretical and empirical phases and shows astonishing mastery of the concept, the design and the conduct of controlled experimental tests. By opening up this neglected text to historians of science, the book aims to provide a point of departure for wider studies of Greek scientific method.