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Others again, says Philodemus, those more devoted to physical science, deny that the genera have any such intrinsic properties, and advise us to go for whichever one happens to please our ears; and likewise with rhythms and melodic types. The reference is to the Epicureans, perhaps to Epicurus himself, who had written a book on music.98 Philodemus was an Epicurean and shared the point of view that the means of musical expression are ethically neutral. His On Music was devoted to reviewing and rebutting earlier philosophers' arguments about music's potency and educational value. He argued that music in itself, as distinct from the words with which it may be associated, is incapable of exercising any moral effect upon the hearer, and that its only usefulness is as the source of an inessential kind of pleasure. |
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This denial of the ethos theory was not exclusively Epicurean. We have already seen the theory attacked by a sophist of the early fourth century BC. About the end of the second century AD the Sceptic Sextus Empiricus devotes the sixth book of his work Against the Scientists to argument against musical theorists, on similar lines to Philodemus. |
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In general, however, belief in the ethical power of music continued to prevail. With the increasing influence of Platonist philosophy from the first century AD onwards, it came to be yet more firmly integrated in cosmological theory. For Ptolemy the whole order of nature, and especially the revolution of the heavenly bodies, is characterized by proportional arrangements akin to those of musical attunement. The soul is analysed into three components which correspond to the principal concords (octave, fifth, fourth), and they have respectively seven, four, and three faculties or virtues, corresponding to the species of the octave, fifth, and fourth. The condition of the soul depends on how all these parts are attuned. Changes in its attunement in response to changed circumstances of life are analogous to musical modulations: greater intensity and activity correspond to tuning to a higher key, greater relaxation and torpor to a lower one, while moderation and stability correspond to median keys such as the Dorian. |
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98 Diog. Laert. 10. 28. Plutarch, Non posse vivi 1095c, cites from other works of Epicurus his view that one should enjoy music but not waste time in boring scholarly debate about it. |
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