Inventories and Examples Representations of a Concept of Music as a historical Category in the Encyclopaedic Context of the 16th Century

The article examines traces of a proto-historical epistemology concerning music in encyclopedical texts in the 16th century. It argues that, despite a certain conservative or persistent tendency of this genre, systems of universal knowledge can reflect and even promote specific concepts that support the emergence of history as a music related concept. Two important books from the field of polyhistoric scholarship are looked at more closely, namely De inventoribus rerum by Polydorus Vergilius (1499) and the Pandectae (the supplement to the Bibliotheca universalis) by Conrad Gesner (1548). It is argued that rather the existence of master narratives than chronological considerations can be interpreted as an essential indicator for the development of historical thinking.