This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
[1342a]
[1]
it is clear that we
should employ all the harmonies, yet not employ them all in the same way, but
use the most ethical ones for education, and the active and passionate kinds for
listening to when others are performing (for any experience that occurs
violently in some souls is found in all, though with different degrees of
intensity—for example pity and fear, and also religious excitement;
for some persons are very liable to this form of emotion, and under the
influence of sacred music we see these people, when they use tunes that
violently arouse the soul, being thrown into a state as if they had received
medicinal treatment and taken a purge; the same experience then must come also to the
compassionate and the timid and the other emotional people generally in such
degree as befalls each individual of these classes, and all must undergo a
purgation and a pleasant feeling of relief; and similarly also the purgative
melodies afford harmless delight to people). Therefore those who go in
for theatrical music must be set to compete in harmonies and melodies of this
kind (and since the
audience is of two classes, one freemen and educated people, and the
other
[20]
the vulgar class composed of
mechanics and laborers and other such persons, the latter sort also must be
assigned competitions and shows for relaxation; and just as their souls are
warped from the natural state, so those harmonies and melodies that are highly
strung and irregular in coloration1
are deviations, but people of each sort receive pleasure from what is naturally
suited to them, owing to which the competitors before an audience of this sort
must be allowed to employ some such kind of music as this); but for education, as has been said,2 the ethical class of melodies
and of harmonies must be employed. And of that nature is the Dorian mode, as we
said before3; but we must
also accept any other mode that those who take part in the pursuit of philosophy
and in musical education may recommend to us. Socrates in the
Republic4 does not do well in allowing only the Phrygian mode along with the
Dorian, and that when he has rejected the flute among instruments;
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.