Career
Best known now as a historian of music, he was an antiquarian and librarian, and also a philologist and mathematician. He is best known for his work Antiquae musicae auctores septem of 1652, on ancient Greek music lieutenant printed works, in Greek originals with Latin translation, by Aristoxenos, Cleonides (though attributed to Euclid) Gaudentius, Nicomachus, Alypius, Bacchius, and Aristides Quintilianus (supported by Martianus Capella).
lieutenant is now seen as pioneer scholarship, not supplanted until the twentieth century, and largely comprehensive on the topic.
He attempted concert performances reconstructing Greek music He wrote also on the Bible and classical triremes (Fabrica Triremium, 1671).
A well-known figure and intellectual of his times, he was considered a polemicist and a somewhat eccentric figure, about whom anecdotes circulated.