The Art of Musical Diagrams

Creating diagrams is an art—a techne—shared across the several of the seven liberal arts. This richly illustrated volume explores how music has been conceived, taught, and imagined through diagrams from antiquity to the modern era. Musical diagrams can condense theory or guide practice; they may be schematic or pictorial, static or moving, intuitive or paradoxical. Their designs invite non-linear interpretation and mirror changing modes of musical thought. Contributors bring historical and interdisciplinary perspectives to this largely unexplored visual tradition: the measurement of Pythagorean intervals and Nicolaus Oresme's harmony of the polygons; Theinred of Dover's theory of species; circular diagrams in the Islamic world; the evolution from two-dimensional diagrams of musical hands to three-dimensional interactive devices known as volvelles; Baroque volvelles and their dynamic role in musical representation; and visual representations of timbre. This book reveals how visual strategies have long informed musical reasoning, offering new insight into the interplay between sound, image, and thought.

"A fascinating collecting on an important, neglected topic. The world of musical diagrams continually surprises, and the contributors to this volume do excellent work in making connections within and beyond their own disciplines."

— Benjamin Wardhaugh