ABSTRACT
The connection between proportion, Nature and beauty was articulated by
Augustine who made the link between mathematics and music. In De
musica he expounded on the science of harmony. He illustrated how har-
monious musical intervals have a mathematical basis and that the intervals
of the perfect consonances – namely; 1:1, or symmetry; 1:2, the octave;
2:3 the fifth; and 3:4 the fourth – are the proportions which reveal the
hidden beauty of the cosmos. To translate these musical intervals into
architecture was to ‘lead the mind from the world of appearances to the
contemplation of the divine order’.1
