Everything about The Quadrivium totally explained
The
quadrivium comprised the four subjects, or arts, taught in
medieval universities after the
trivium. The word is
Latin, meaning "the four ways" or "the four roads": the completion of the
liberal arts. It was developed by
Martianus Capella. The quadrivium consisted of
arithmetic,
geometry,
music, and
astronomy. These followed the preparatory work of the trivium made up of
grammar,
logic (or
dialectic, as it was called at the times), and
rhetoric. In turn, the quadrivium was considered preparatory work for the serious study of
philosophy and
theology.
About the quadrivium, Proclus Diadochus said in
In primum Euclidis elementorum librum commentarii:
Arithmetic is the Discrete At Rest
Astronomy is the Discrete In Motion
Geometry is the Continuous At Rest
Music is the Continuous In Motion
Medieval usage
At many medieval universities, this would have been the course leading to the degree of
Master of Arts (after the
BA). After the MA the student could enter for Bachelor's degrees of the higher faculties, such as Music. To this day some of the postgraduate degree courses lead to the degree of Bachelor (the
B.Phil and
B.Litt. degrees are examples in the field of philosophy, and the
B.Mus. remains a postgraduate qualification at
Oxford and
Cambridge universities).
The subject of music within the quadrivium was originally the classical subject of
harmonics, in particular the study of the proportions between the musical intervals created by the division of a
monochord. A relationship to music as actually practised wasn't part of this study, but the framework of classical harmonics would substantially influence the content and structure of music theory as practised both in European and Islamic cultures.
Modern usage
In modern applications of the liberal arts as curriculum in colleges or universities, the quadrivium may be considered as the study of
number and its relationship to physical space or time: arithmetic was pure number, geometry was number in
space, music number in
time, and astronomy number in
space and time. Morris Kline classifies the four elements of the quadrivium as pure (arithmetic), stationary (geometry), moving (astronomy) and applied (music) number.
This schema is sometimes referred to as
classical education, but it's more accurately a development of the 12th and 13th centuries, with classical elements often recovered through Islamic classical scholarship, rather than an organic growth from the educational systems of antiquity. The term continues to be used by the
classical education movement.
Further Information
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