Music Theory and Natural Order from the Renaissance to the Early Twentieth CenturyMusic theorists of almost all ages employ a concept of Nature to justify observations or statements about music. The understanding of what Nature is, however, is subject to cultural and historical differences. In tracing these explanatory strategies and their changes in music theories between c. 1600 and 1900, these essays explore (for the first time in a book length study) how the multifarious conceptions of nature, located variously between