Against the Monochord: Numbers, String Lengths, and the History of Music Theory

Instruments of music theory are in. A call has been sounded for a “new organology,” and recently conference sessions and articles have been dedicated to the role of instruments in the history of music theory. This research has advanced our understanding of music and its history by illuminating previously overshadowed ways in which musical instruments, in all their physicality, have affected music theorizing. Yet the monochord, I contend, is a counterexample to this corrective movement, since the pertinence of its physicality and practical application have been, if anything, inflated in our understanding of the premodern world. Since any Pythagorean-influenced theory in which larger numbers represent lower pitches can be “updated” by reciprocating the numerical relationships to represent acoustic frequencies, we are tempted to interpret all premodern numerical descriptions of intervals as string lengths on a monochord (and implicitly as frequencies). I critique the centrality of the monochord in modern narratives and question what practical purposes the monochord could have served in the past, reading Guido and Boethius to argue that the instrument was less useful than might be supposed. Next I analyze two medieval cases of number-based music theory that refute any identification of numbers with the length of a monochord string. I conclude by considering the role of the monochord in recent literature, particularly the relationship between the monochord and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s concept of the epistemic thing.

Music Theory Online, forthcoming