The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory

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Edited by Thomas Christensen, 998 pages.

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Excerpt:
The schematization of music theory comes into being as a natural extension of Aristolean schematics. The first substantive if incompletely surviving body of music theory, that of Aristoxenus (c 360 BC) partitions music into three domains (pitch, rhythm and melody). A more complete, complex and elegant architecture of music theory is to be found only in Aristides Quintilianus's three volume On Music (early fourth century AD), an ambitious and comprehensive text, which is a multi-dimensional conception, superimposing schemas of feature, function and form.