Competing Views on Music’s Power to Stir the Emotions: Girolamo Cardano and Julius Caesar Scaliger

In his On Subtlety (1550) Girolamo Cardano discusses an issue that was of great interest to many of his contemporaries: ancient music’s emotional effects. He asks himself why ancient music was more learned, effective and nobler than that of the present day in order to revive its powers. In his search for an answer to this question, he critically discusses ideas about the connection between the nature of emotional states and pieces or styles of music.
In order to undermine Cardano’s belief in the possibility of reviving the powerful music of the ancients, his rival Julius Caesar Scaliger tried to demonstrate in his Exoteric Exercises against Cardano’s ‘On Subtlety’ (1557) that Cardano’s was creating new mysteries and obscurities with his explanation of subtle musical phenomena. This chapter argues that – through their debate – Cardano and Scaliger broadened the explanation of music’s effects and made an important contribution to larger issues concerning the connection between music and the emotions.