Al-Farabi divided Kitab al-Musiqa al-Kabir into two
treatises. The first treatise is composed of two parts; following the
Aristotelian tradition, al-Farabi split his study of music into a
theoretical and practical aspect: • The first part, which consists of two
discourses, is an introduction which establishes the theoretical principles of music and investigation into how
sound is generated. • The second part applies the theoretical principles established in the first part to the
musical instruments that were in use during al-Farabi’s time, while also discussing
musical intervals and different kinds of
melodies. The second treatise was intended to be a
commentary to the thought of previous
theorists of music, but it is not extant. ==References==