Studying music: practical musicians & musical scholars

In Medieval times there was a distinction between studying music as a theoretical subject (mostly the mathematical relationships of harmony) and studying music for performance. As you might expect the scholars had a relatively high status, the players were lowly servants.

Music was studied as part of the Quadrivium (the second part of the Liberal Arts degree taught within a medieval university, the first is called the Trivium. Every scholar studied this theoretical music as part of their degree.

Boethius is one of the most well known medieval music scholars. In his work "De Musica" he classified three areas of music:
1. Musica mundana - music of the spheres/world
2. Musica humana - harmony of human body and spiritual harmony
3. Musica instrumentalis - instrumental music (including human voice)

His work illustrates the medieval view that maths and pattern could be used to understand the entire world. The Quadrivium itself is almost entirely maths: arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and music (theory). Initially my degree was Joint Honours Music and Maths; my favourite module was the "Number and Proportion" music module looking at maths within music and maths associated with music. Sometimes I feel like a medieval scholar who was born a few hundred years too late.