II. BOETHIUS
Boethius (ca. A.D. 480-524), transmitter of ancient
Greek philosophy, aesthetics, and theory of music to
the Christian West, follows Greek tradition when, in
the last chapter of Book I of his De institutione musica,
he defines a musician as he “who masters the musical
art not through mechanical exercise but after theoret-
ical investigation through the power of speculation”
(Friedlein, p. 224). Boethius admits the existence of two
other kinds of musicians, performers and composers.
To performers he denies any competence to judge and
understand music because of the merely mechanical
character of their work (quoniam famulantur), and
because they bring no rational powers to bear on music
but, on the contrary, are utterly devoid of the capacity
for thought; the composers share the same fate because
in composing they are not motivated by philosophical
speculation, but by some natural instinct: non potius
speculatione ac ratione, quam naturali quodam
instinctu fertur ad carmen (Friedlein, p. 225).
The concept of the instinctus naturalis as the
motivating force animating the composer is used by
Boethius in a pejorative sense. A philosophy that places
ratio at the head of all human faculties, that considers
sensory experience as uncertain and as the source of
error and illusion, cannot give anything but a low place
to natural instinct. “It is much greater and nobler to
know what one does than to do what one knows,” says
Boethius (Friedlein, p. 224).
