[255] Five definitions of music are given by Isidore, two making no allusion to its mathematical character. They are as follows:
“Musica est peritia modulationis sono cantuque consistens.” Etym., 3, 15, 1.
“Musica est disciplina quae de numeris loquitur qui inveniuntur in sonis.” Etym., 3, Preface.
“Musica est disciplina quae de numeris loquitur qui ad aliquid sunt his qui inveniuntur in sonis.” Etym., 2, 24, 15.
“Musica quae in carminibus cantibusque consistit.” Etym., 1, 2, 2.
“Musica est ars spectabilis voce vel gestu, habens in se numerorum ac soni certam dimensionem cum scientia perfectae modulationis. Haec constat ex tribus modis, id est, sono, verbis, numeris.” Diff., ii, cap. 39.
[256] Etym., 3, 17, 1.
[257] Etym., 3, 15, 1.
[258] C. Schmidt, op. cit., after a detailed comparison of passages, concludes that Isidore did not obtain his material for De Musica from Cassiodorus or Augustine, but that all three go back independently to an original work produced by an unknown Christian writer. However, the numerous identical passages in Cassiodorus and Isidore would indicate that the latter had used the former at least as a guide in plagiarism. See Schmidt, pp. 26–52, and compare Dressel, De Isidori Originum Fontibus (Turin, 1874), pp. 5 and 6.
[259] Woodridge in the Oxford History of Music (Oxford, 1901), vol. i, p. 33, note, says of Isidore’s De Musica, that it “clearly reveals the complete ignorance of his time. His dicta upon music are chiefly crude and misleading paraphrases from Cassiodorus and others, from which it is evident that the signification of the terms employed had completely escaped him. Modes are not mentioned by him [but cf. 3, 20, 7] and keys and genera are confounded together.”