quadrivium

Herschel believed that music belonged as one of the four liberal arts of the quadrivium, alongside arithmetic, geometry and astronomy.

It underpinned the more difficult “quadrivium”—arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy— that students went on to learn; all seven subjects taken in toto being the so-called liberal arts.

The four subjects of the ‘quadrivium’ were arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music.

Progress in wisdom was to be obtained, so far as secular knowledge was concerned, by the “seven ascents of theoretical discipline,” i.e. the trivium and the quadrivium.

When lined along all its sides with handsome buildings, the superior elevation above the level of the Lake of the more northerly quadrivium, will be in its favour.