ABSTRACT
Eadmer regards the music of Dunstan as an echo of harmonia coelestis, perhaps the music of the spheres. Dunstan's music produces a salutary effect in his listeners, bringing them into accord with celestial harmony. In the thirteenth century, long after the death of Eadmer, a Customary was compiled for St Augustine's Abbey, as old as Christ Church but located outside the city walls. What could thirteenth-century authors hope to accomplish in their understanding of music and medicine? If there were ways of regarding music-making as the site of a personal interaction between patients and therapist, so important in some Modern therapy people do not know what they were. One thirteenth-century musician in France, Johannes de Grocheio, declares that narrative songs remind their listeners of the misfortunes endured by heroes such as Charlemagne, or by saints such as Stephen, so making them better able to bear their own burdens.
