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Full Idea
Music charms us although its beauty only consists in the harmony of numbers.
Gist of Idea
Music charms, although its beauty is the harmony of numbers
Source
Gottfried Leibniz (Principles of Nature and Grace based on Reason [1714], §17)
Book Ref
Leibniz,Gottfried: 'Philosophical Writings', ed/tr. Parkinson,G.H.R. [Dent 1973], p.203
A Reaction
'Only'! This is a super-pythagorean view of music, as you might expect from a great mathematician. Did he understand the horrible compromises that had just been made to achieve even-tempered tuning? Patterns are the key, as always.
| 171 | Music is a knowledge of love in the realm of harmony and rhythm [Plato] |
| 316 | Music has harmony like the soul, and serves to reorder disharmony within us [Plato] |
| 5063 | Music charms, although its beauty is the harmony of numbers [Leibniz] |
| 20101 | Without music life would be a mistake [Nietzsche] |
| 20341 | An interpretation adds further properties to the generic piece of music [Wollheim] |
| 12168 | Music is not representational, since thoughts about a subject are never essential to it [Scruton] |
| 12875 | One false note doesn't make it a performance of a different work [Simons] |
| 20402 | Music is too definite to be put into words (not too indefinite!) [Davies,S] |