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Mode, genus, rhythm, and tempo naturally had a considerable role to play in determining the character and emotional effect of a musical composition. Defining and accounting for this variety of effect became a recognized, if controversial, objective among theorists. Already in the first half of the fifth century we find some lyric poets making programmatic assertions that a certain mode is the best for a particular purpose.74 The Pythagoreans are reported to have classified (and made systematic practical use of) types of music producing different effects, rousing or calming. They probably took both harmonic intervals and rhythms into account in their classification and regarded number ratios as the crucial factor in each case.75 |
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It is possible that Lasus had said something on these matters in his pioneering treatise on music. However, the first writer we know of who expounded them in detail is Damon. This man, considered the greatest Athenian intellect of his time, an associate of Pericles, Prodicus, and Socrates, was probably a well-known figure by the 440sit may have been then that he was ostracizedand still about in the 420s.76 He published an essay in the form of an address to the Areopagus Council, which was a sort of Athenian House of Lords, filled with retired state officials, enjoying little real power but vested with some high judicial functions and nominally with the responsibility of supervising public morality in general.77 This last was the relevant point for Damon, who wished to argue that musical modes and rhythms were intimately connected with ethical qualities, and that accordingly it was important for the state to concern itself with the regulation of music and musical education. 'A musical revolution always means a social revolution':78 it sounds as if Damon wanted |
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74 Pratinas, PMG 712. quoted above, p. 178; id. PMG 708 and Pind. fr. 67, cited p. 179. |
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75 See pp. 31f. The earliest source is Aristoxenus. We cannot trust the attribution of this science to Pythagoras himself, but it almost certainly goes back to the 5th c. |
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76 Cf. Plato Com. fr. 207, PI. Alc. i. 118c with schol., La. 180d, 197d, Isoc. 15.235, Arist. Ath. Pol. 27.4, Plut. Per. 4.1-4, Nicias 6.1, Aristides 1.7; U. yon Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Aristoteles und Athen (Berlin, 1893), i. 134f., Griechische Verskunst, 59f.; K. von Jan, RE iv. 2072; W. Kroll, RE Supp. iii. 324; H. Ryffel, Museum Helveticum 4 (1947), 23-38; F. Lasserre, Plutarque: De la musique (Olten and Lausanne, 1954), 53-79. |
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77 Isoc. 7.37. Cf. U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Einleitung in die attische Tragödie (Berlin, 1889), 21 n. 35. |
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78 Pl. Resp. 424c = Diels, Vorsokr. 37B 10. |
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