The Judaeo-Christian Origin of Music in the Works of Isidore of Seville

Abstract

In his Chronica, Isidore of Seville outlines a series of interesting stories about the inventors of music based on Jerome’s Chronicon. One of these stories stands out for its location, content and originality, as it attributed the creation of music to a biblical figure. This differs from Jerome, his source, who cites music’s pagan origin related to Graeco-Latin mythology. The Sevillian bishop subsequently revisits the subject in his Etymologiae, outlining two new stories about the biblical inventors of music whose content, once again, varies substantially in relation to what was set out in his Chronica. This article aims to provide an explanation for the variations in the content in these three stories (which, surprisingly, have gone unnoticed in almost all critical scholarship) based on the analysis of Isidorian historical-musical thought, his work methods and the cultural context of Late Antiquity.