Role of Instrumental Music in the Medieval System of Spiritual Values

The purpose of the article is to identify the place of instrumental music in the medieval system of spiritual and cultural values of Western Europe people by researching the treatises on philosophy and music. The research methodology of the study includes the information search and gain on the secular music art by the review of the musical treatises, as well as the clerical and other historical sources applying idiographic, hypothetical-inductive, logical, and content analysis methods. The scientific novelty of the study is to change the existing concept of the noncritical and applied importance of medieval instrumental music that has developed in the history of music by revealing new features of its moral, ethical, and artistic value. The findings of the study show that instrumental music and folk traditions are tied strongly and time-honoured, despite numerous church interludes. Conclusions. We have identified the inadequate attitude of the clergy towards musicians of different activity and social status and who express conformism to a different extent with the doctrines and policies of the papal church. The analysis of some treatises of the time has given a reason to express the idea of the cosmic role of music in the system of the medieval worldview, as evidenced by efforts of the sophists to describe the correlation of parts of the universe (macrocosm) and parts of the human shape (microcosm). In this treatises, we have also found the seed of theory of effects that will finally set in the esthetic of High Renaissance. After the study of some medieval instrumental genres it has been hypothesized that some of them might be independent (not applied to dance, singing or everything else) even in the 13th century