Boethius' writings were for years the only source known to medieval people for the ideas of the Greek philosophers. When Boethius wrote the Consolation, he was in prison accused of treason. This had followed a stellar career at the court of Theoderic the Great, which had won him great renown as statesman, orator, and scholar. He had made a brilliant marriage, and his sons had been made consuls, the greatest honor a Roman could hope to attain.

One of the first musical works to be printed (Venice, 1491-92), Boethius's De institutione musica, written in the early sixth century, was for medieval authors from around the ninth century on the authoritative document on Greek music-theoretical thought and systems. The focus on counterpoint and the ecclesiatical modes in treatises after 1400 marginalized Boethius's volume to some extent, but it regained significance with the discovery and translation into Latin of ancient Greek works that Boethius had used as the basis for De institutione musica. Franchino Gaffurio, for example, acknowledged Boethius in Theorica musice (1492) as the authoritative source on music-theoretical matters (though he did come to realize that ancient sources disagreed more than Boethius indicated), and Heinrich Glarean relied on Boethius in establishing a theory of twelve modes in the Dodekachordon (1547). Glarean, however, was the exception rather than the rule, for in the 1500s and beyond Boethius's treatise had only historical significance, as a repository of knowledge about Greek music theory. Readers today study De institutione musica in order to understand the historical evolution medieval music theory and its sources in Greek writings. Further, the concepts pondered and issues raised by Boethius--among others, sound, its propagation, mathematical division of pitch space, consonance, scale forms and systems--remain relevant for music theory today.

In addition to his own personal writings, Boethius translated Aristotle's Organon but died before he could translate Plato's work and fulfil his aim of harmonising the two philosophies. He fell from favour and was put in prison where he wrote De Consolatione Philosophiae.