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good qualities. In song it is the words and subject matter that play the primary role, but they must be combined with the appropriate modes and rhythms, used in a consistent and straightforward way, or the ethical effect will be confused and obscured. Out of six harmoniaiapparently the six discussed by Damononly the Dorian and Phrygian are approved.90 In the case of rhythms Damon is explicitly named as the authority.91 Later his warning against changes in musical style is cited with approval.92 Plato may not have followed Damon in all particulars, but he shared his general theory of music's ethical power, his anti-modernism, and his totalitarian tendencies. Both in the Republic and in the Laws Plato manipulates theory to legislate for the Classical forms of music and dance that he liked, and to exclude other kinds as useless or pernicious. |
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Aristotle takes it as an evident fact that music can alter us; he refers to Olympus' melodies, which are acknowledged to make us feel exalted. His explanation is essentially identical with Plato's. Melodies and rhythms contain likenesses of ethical qualities and statesanger, mildness, manliness, self-control, and so onand our souls respond to these likenesses when we hear them. Differences of ethos and effect are especially manifested in the harmoniai. Aristotle specifies some of these and the ways in which they affect people. |
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It is the same with rhythms: some of them have a more stationary, some a more mobile character, and of the latter some have more vulgar movements, others more respectable. From all this it is clear that music is capable of conferring a particular quality on the soul's character . . . And there seems to be (in the soul) some sort of kinship with the harmoniai and the rhythms, so that many of the sages say, some of them that the soul is an attunement (harmonia), others that it possesses attunement.93 |
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When he goes on to deal with the use of the harmoniai in education, Aristotle refers explicitly to Plato's discussion in the Republic, and it is clear that his ideas of the whole matter are strongly influenced by Plato's. |
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90Resp. 376e ff., 395c-e, 398b-399c (cf. above, pp. 180-3); Leg. 802c-e, 812 c-e. Cf. La. 188d, where, if 'Lydian' is taken to include Tense Lydian and Mixolydian, the same modes are mentioned and Dorian, 'the only true Greek mode' (Ionian is not counted), is picked out as the mode to which the manly man's life is attuned. |
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91Resp. 399e-400c. |
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92Resp. 424c. |
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93 Arist. Pol. 1340a6-b19 (Barker, GMW i. 174-6). For Aristotle's comments on individual rhythms and modes see above, pp. 158 and 180-2. The idea that the soul itself is an attunement may go back to Philolaus; see Burkert, LS 272. |
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