A01=Sean Alexander Gurd
Author_Sean Alexander Gurd
Category=AVA
Category=AVLK
Category=QDHA
Category=QRAX
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forthcoming
Product details
- ISBN 9780197831748
- Weight: 463g
- Dimensions: 165 x 240mm
- Publication Date: 06 Aug 2026
- Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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God's Lyre is about a network of ancient ideas that connected musical expression to natural philosophy. This network included Aristotelians, Stoics, and Alexandrian monotheists, and it had a major effect on important theories of language as well. What held the various strands together was a common orientation in which musical phenomena were theorized as a consequence of nature and natural processes. In this book, Sean Alexander Gurd discusses Theophrastus, Diogenes of Babylon, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Philo of Alexandria, Clement of Alexandria, and John Chrysostom. These authors suggest that music was the result of nature rising to a certain pitch of passionate intensity.
Sean Alexander Gurd is the Floyd A. Cailloux professor of classics at the University of Texas at Austin. He has active research interests in the areas of Ancient Theatre (especially tragedy), Ancient Music, and any part of intellectual culture that interfaced with the concept of art, craft, or technique. He is also the director of the Ancient Music and Performance Lab, which is dedicated to exploring innovative ways of integrating arts practice with humanities scholarship. He has written four monographs and edited several anthologies.
