20 Chapter 1
Thus, a continuous line of quadrivial studies goes all the way from Plato to about the
eighteenth century, in the sense that educated persons were exposed to a unified curriculum
of those four subjects, in which music (as mathematical harmonic science) was habitually
studied in conjunction with the others. In the chapters that follow, we shall explore some
of the consequences of this shared fourfold study, all the more powerful because it was
the capstone of higher education, the central content of university learning. Even when
the quadrivium is not specifically mentioned, we still need to remember that many edu-
cated persons up to about the time of Isaac Newton would have a shared experience of
musical theory that was as much a part of their common fund of learning as was the basic
study of arithmetic, geometry, and the basic linguistic arts of the trivium (considered so
common that they underlie the connotations of “ trivial ” ). Though we continue to share
most of these studies as part of our elementary (and even higher) educations, music and
perhaps also astronomy have fallen out. Not so for our predecessors, as we shall see.