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Indeed, our souls are quite plainly affected in sympathy with the actual activities of a melody, recognizing the kinship, as it were, of the ratios belonging to its particular kind of constitution, and being moulded by the movements specific to the idiosyncrasies of the melodies, so that they are led sometimes into pleasures and relaxations, sometimes into grief and contractions; they are sometimes stupefied and lulled to sleep, sometimes invigorated and aroused; and they are sometimes turned towards peacefulness and restraint, sometimes towards frenzy and ecstasy, as the melody itself modulates in different ways at different times, and draws our souls towards the conditions constituted from the likenesses of the ratios.99 |
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These likenesses do not seem to arise, as in Plato, from imitation of psychic states by music, but to be inherent in the various combinations of higher and lower tensions. |
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Aristides Quintilianus presents a more elaborate system of cosmic harmony. Everything is based on number and proportion. Our earthly music is an imperfect imitation of the heavenly attunement manifested in the working of the universe.100 The soul itself is an attunement, having the same set of ratios as a musical scale and therefore moved by music which uses these ratios. Alternatively, it is moved because, descending from purer regions, it has become enmeshed in a structure founded on sinews and breath; these vibrate in sympathy when stringed or wind instruments are sounded.101 The soul chooses a body with male or female attributes or some combination, according to its inclination, and develops emotions reflecting its male, female, or mixed affinities. Musical scales and keys, too, are more or less male or female in character, and will appeal to the individual hearer according to his or her own sexual mix. Lower keys are male, higher ones female. In the case of different modal scales the sex quotient depends on the prominence of male or female notes.102 Instruments too are graded on a sexual scale according to register or timbre, and this makes them suited to different harmoniai and rhythms.103 |
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99Harm. 3.4-7 (Barker, GMW ii. 374-9). The passage quoted is as translated by Barker. |
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100100 Aristid. Quint. 3.7, 9ff. |
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101101 Id. 2. 17-18. |
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102102 Id. 2.8, 14. The lower movable note of each tetrachord is represented as being the most female and emotional, the upper one the most male and vigorous, the standing notes more male than female, except for Mese, which is more female, as also is Proslambanomenos. The sexing is bound up with an aesthetic classification of the vowels used m a sol-fa system, for which see below, p. 265. |
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103 Id. 2.16. In the chapters where the sex theory is expounded it is implied that the number of different possible emotions and mixtures of them, all potentially expres- |
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(Footnote continued on next page) |
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