Elementa harmonica

Elementa harmonica is a treatise on the subject of musical scales by Aristoxenus, of which substantial amounts are extant.

The work dates apparently to c.300 B.C.

The work is known variously as Aristoxenou (or Aristoxenoy) Armonika (or Harmonika) Stoicheia i.e. Aristoxenou Armonika Stoicheia, Aristoxenou Harmonika Stoicheia etc. All of these translate as The Harmonics of Aristoxenus. Elementa harmonica translates as Elements of Harmonics. The work is otherwise rendered as The Elements, or Elements, the latter translates into Greek as Στοιχεία.

The Elements is held to be the work founding a tradition of the study of music based on practice, which is, to understand music by study to the ear. Musicology as a discipline achieved nascency with the systematic study undertaken in the work, which treated music independently of those prior studies which held it in a position of something purely and only in relation to an understanding of the . In-as-much, the Elements is the first and earliest work on music in the classical Greek tradition. Earliest considerations arose within the Pythagorean school c.500 and thinking dwelled on the mathematical nature of harmonia. Aristotle, whose Peripatetic school Aristoxenus belonged to, addressed the subject in his work On the Soul. Dewhitt thinks Aristoxenus treatment of the subject was essentially to attempt to describe and locate the elements of the soul, and provide mathematical proofs for these. Aristoxenus is thought contrary to the position of the Pythagoreans, he favoured an intellectual treatment of the subject which Aristotle had set out in his work, which is the exercise of inductive logic with attention to empirical evidence.

Aristoxenus is thought the first to consider music in this respect, as a separate subject, due to this work.

The work is a theoretical treatise concerned with harmony and harmonics, and thus pertains to a burgeoning theory of euphonics. The study of harmonics is especially concerned with treating melody in order to find its components (the Greek word for melody is μέλος).

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