Pythagoras's Theory of Music

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Recommended: Pythagoras and his contributions

Pythagoras was born approximately 570 B.C. on Samos, an island located near the western coast of Asia Minor. It is said that mathematicians such as Thales and Anaximander had tutored him. Thales had influenced him to pursue his education in Egypt. In 525 BC, when Cambyses II conquered Egypt, Pythagoras was held captive in Babylon where he became associated with the Magi priesthood; under their teachings, he grew more knowledgeable in mathematics, geometry, and music.

Pythagoras founded the Pythagorean School of Mathematics in Cortona and the semicircle.

Around 518 BC, in southern Italy, Pythagoras was the head of a mathematical society with an inner circle of followers known as mathematikoi. Pythagoras’s followers lived permanently with the Society, had no personal possessions and were vegetarians. The beliefs that Pythagoras held were that at its deepest level, reality is mathematical in nature, that philosophy can be used for spiritual purification,that the soul can rise to union with the divine, that certain symbols have a mystical significance, and that all brothers of the order should observe strict loyalty and secrecy.

Although we have some idea of what Pythagoras studied (properties of numbers that are similar to modern mathematics, such as even and odd numbers, triangular numbers, perfect numbers) his teachings within the schools and the society were very secretive and mysterious. There is little information pertaining to his process of creating famous mathematical formulas such as the Pythagorean Theorem (a2 + b2 = c2).

Among the many other mysteries surrounding Pythagoras, the cause of his death remains one of the most famous. There are two theories 1) There was an uprising against the Pythagoreans that ...

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...in mathematics / Marcus du Sautoy. Includes bibliographical references (p. [317]-322) and index. New York : HarperCollins, c2003. http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/dusautoy/

The music of Pythagoras : how an ancient brotherhood cracked the code of the universe and lit the path from antiquity to outer space / Kitty Ferguson.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [347]-353) and index.
New York : Walker, 2008. http://kitty-ferguson.com/books Pythagoras : pioneering mathematician and musical theorist of Ancient Greece / Dimitra Karamanides. New York : Rosen Pub. Group, c2006.
Pythagoras and Music. Melanie Richards, M.Mus., S.R.C. Rosicrucian Digest No. 12009 https://www.rosicrucian.org/publications/digest/digest1_2009/05_web/07_richards/07_richards.pdf

The Pythagorean Theory of Music and Color. Fludd's De Musica Mundana.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/sta19.htm

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