Agustín de Hipona y La Música

Starting from the assumption that, for early medieval Christian thought, music entails a given duality between what it represents as a means of spiritual elevation -which implies understanding it as a harmony of discordant elements-, on the one hand, and what associates it with a sensual enjoyment of a quasi-diabolical nature, on the other, I propose to carry out a reading tour about this problematic relationship in the work of Augustine of Hippo. I will frame this question by first highlighting the place of music in early Christian thought, its redefinition as part of the liberal arts, and the Augustinian conception of music, which makes it a basically numerical, mathematical science, which determines, in turn, the relationship it establishes between the soul and sensory perception, on the one hand, and between the song and what is sung, on the other, source of the perception of pleasure as risk, as imminent danger.