Aristoxenus

Aristoxenus of Tarentum (c. 375–335 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher and music theorist, a pupil of Aristotle, who later taught in Athens. Though most of his writings are lost, his ideas on rhythm and harmony are known through later authors and fragments. He is traditionally associated with treatises such as Elements of Rhythm (Elementa Rhythmica) and Elements of Harmony (Elementa Harmonica), as well as discussions on the triad.

Aristoxenus is notable for a departure from purely mathematical explanations of music. He argued that music should be studied through experience of the ear, emphasizing perceptual judgments of pitch, interval size, timbre, and rhythm rather than absolute numerical ratios alone. This empirical approach contrasted with the more ratio-centered views of earlier Pythagorean theorists.

In theory, he organized Greek scales around the tetrachord and distinguished three genera of tetrachords—diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic—each with a different distribution of semitones. This framework influenced subsequent Greek music theory by focusing on perceptual categories rather than fixed mathematical constructions.

His work also treated rhythm and melody as systematic subjects, examining how durations and melodic progressions are perceived and structured. Aristoxenus’s emphasis on sensory evaluation and his classification of scales and rhythms had a lasting impact on later music theory, including how ancient theorists contrasted Aristoxenean and Pythagorean approaches. He remains a central figure in the transition from mathematics-based to perception-based understandings of Greek music.