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Ethical View of Music in Ancient Greece
Ethical View of Music in Ancient Greece
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OF
A. LIPPMAN
CONCEPTS
intrinsicfeatureof the Greek outlook; long before they become
188
189
190
191
by apostasy.We cannot doubt that the conceptof musichad been radically changed; the Orphics are concerned with the lyre and the voice
ratherthan the aulos, with enchantmentratherthan frenzy,and even
prophecytakes on a reasonable instead of a rapturouscharacter.Dance
is apparentlyabsent, while the appearance of song means that some
contributionis made by the specificallyrational elementof music. In
general,music is no longeran inarticulateoutpouringof emotiongiven
forceonly by pantomime,but a harmonicscience with a tonal as well
as a verbal logos. This is all a concomitantof an interestin the purification of the soul ratherthan its identification
with divinity,and of a reliance on asceticismand on freedomfromcontaminationratherthan on
exhilarationand frenzy.
The most importantof the Orphic sectswere the Pythagoreans,and
theyseem to have added an Egyptianelementto the movement;Herodotus goes so far as to state that the Orphic riteswere reallyEgyptianand
Orphism,
Pythagorean.7Possiblyit was thisconstituentthat transformed
movingit in the directionof philosophyand science,which were capable
of new growth and wider influence.Eventually there was a division
between the esoteric or religious Pythagoreans,who were known as
akousmatikoi,and the exoticor scientificgroup,knownas mathematikoi.
The two parties differednot only with respect to their interests,but
also because the one was monastic and the other public in its way of
life.The novel characteristics
of Pythagoreanthoughtare evidentin the
in
change theyeffected cosmogony.The Orphic cosmogonyextendsthe
Hesiodic by its tendencyto personifyabstractions;it is still a theogony,
but its gods are oftenconceptsexpressedin an old form.In the Pythagorean cosmogonythereis stilla formalcorrespondencewiththe Orphic
hierarchicalpicture of divinities,but the gods themselveshave disappeared, leaving onlytracesbehind in the creativeMonad and the indefinite Dyad. Mythologyhas with this step become philosophy; and althoughthe mathematicalstudiesof the PythagoreanBrotherhoodreflect
in theirveryconstitutionthe dominantpositionof music, there can be
no doubt that a new and higherpurificationwas discovered,and that
theorywas substitutedfor sonority.Even the stresson abstinence and
asceticismin the conduct of life has unmistakableimplicationsfor the
kind of music the Pythagoreansmay have employed, if indeed they
it is
employedany at all; forneo-Pythagoreanlegends notwithstanding,
that
the
turned
more
or
less
quite possible
Pythagoreans
away
completely
fromsensoryexperience,even from that which might involve tenuous
7Loc. cit.
192
And are you not an aulos player? That you are, and a performer far more
wonderful than Marsyas. He indeed with instrumentsused to charm the souls of
men by the powers of his breath, and the players of his music do so still: for the
melodies of Olympus are derived from Marsyas who taught them, and these,
whether they are played by a great master or by a miserable aulos-girl, have a
power which no others have; they alone possess the soul and reveal the wants of
8 See, forexample, Metaphysics,985b, 24.
9 OdysseyXII, 39-45.
1oPolitics, 1341b.
11Sophist, 231b. In Laws, 790c-92e, after describingthe musical cure of Bacchic
frenzy,Plato proceeds to apply the theory of this process to education, seeking to
avoid occasions of sorrow and fear altogether,as well as to strengthenthe habits of
cheerfulnessand courage.
12Meno, 80a.
13 Republic, 399c-d.
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
The gnomic elegiesof Theognis, for example, which were sung at symposia, conveyedexplicitmoral principlesof aristocraticbehavior.And up
to thetimeof Plato, educationwas conductedverylittlein formalschools,
but was based on an individualrelationship,the love betweenmasterand
pupil, which dominatedthe philosophicacademy as well as privatetutoring. In thislies its strength,and perhaps the ultimatereason for its vast
influenceon the courseof educationalhistory;insteadof being a relatively
superficialmatterof impartingknowledge,it is a fundamentallymoral
undertakingof cultivatingand moldingcharacter,of fashioningthe whole
personin accordance with a particularway of life. In such a framework
the importanceof music becomes more readily understandable.Before
schools were public, they were for centuriessocietiesof the elect, each
pupil bound by personal ties to the master. Music took its part in a
leisured and aristocraticlife; but still more importantwas its role in
ritual,which involvedthe age-old connectionof music with knowledge,
and more especially,with wisdom (which contains an ethical component). The philosophicschool was dedicated to music,or we can equally
well say, to culture. In the activitiesof the PythagoreanBrotherhood,
music may verywell have displayedthe fullvarietyof its ethical powers,
many of them without any basis in imitation; it was a constituentof
ritual, a medical purificationof the soul, and even - in the form of
theoreticand scientificstudy- a keyto metaphysicalknowledge;it was
studied,that is, for directlyphilosophicaland religiousreasons,and not
only employedin sonorousformfor more palpable influenceson health
and piety.In the case of Sappho's school in Lesbos, therewas continual
use of music in periodic ritual and ceremony;and instructionin lyreplaying,singing,and dance was an importantpart of the curriculum.
not
This impliesa pervasiveethicalinfluence;but the Sapphic fragments
only provideglimpsesof the place of music in the school of the poetess:
theyare remnantsof a potentart that was itselfmusic and that brought
to Greek consciousnessmany subtle shades of subjective experience.In
this way, her poems possesseda broad educational value that extended
far beyond her immediatecircle.
But if the public natureof Spartan education contrastswith the aristocraticGreek traditionof privatetutoring,anothercontrastis provided
by Athenian education of the earlier fifthcentury,for this was civilian
ratherthan military.But neitherthis significantchange nor the growth
of democracy radically affectedthe persistenceof aristocraticvalues.
These proved to be compatiblewith the ideal of social justicewhich the
poetryof Solon had long beforeenvisaged as a counterpartof the bal-
201
anced order of nature, and now valor and glory were retained in a
civilian and democratic settingsimply by transferring
them from the
battlefieldto athletics.As a result,sport took on a new intensity,and
the celebrationof victoryin the various games, especiallyas we see it
in the victoryodes, or epinikia, of Pindar, was of the highestdignity
and impressiveness.
But at the same time,the processof democratization
a
presented problem. Athleticswas to a great extentopen to all, and
in the public school, which grew up side by side withindividual education,aristocraticideals and curriculawere similarlyadopted forcommon
use. The outcome was a serious controversy,
for the belief did not die
that culture was a restrictedphenomenonand education necessarilya
selectivematter.In any event, music retainedits historicalethical role
and its commandingstatus. As far as intellectualeducation was concerned - that is, apart fromgymnastics- the chief mark of a cultivated man was the abilityto sing and dance and play the lyre.
Outside the formaleducation of the schools,choral poetrycontinued
to exert its powerfulmoral influence,especially in Sparta, while the
drinkingparty,highlyorganizedand probablythe most importantinstitutionof Greek culturallife,provideda more restrictedaristocraticclass
with trainingthat was almost exclusivelymoral and almost exclusively
musical. Dancing, and performanceson lyre and aulos, were secondary
to the skolion,in which each guest sang in his turn. A knowledgeof
poetrythat extended from epic to lyric was a presuppositionof such
gatherings:Homer and Tyrtaeusand Solon and Theognis furnishedan
extremelycomprehensivemoral cultivation,in which the explicitteachings of elegiac poetryoccupied a centralposition.It was the symposium
that was mainlyresponsibleforthe preservationof an aristocraticethic.
the older choral poetryof Stesichorus,Alcman, SimoMost importantly,
nides,and Pindar knownto thecultivatedman throughhisparticipation
in choral song- came to be performedmonodically,so that the symposium incorporatedtheideals of civic educationand ensuredthe continuity
of themusicaltraditionof liberalstudies.
Prior to the Sophistsand Socrates,Greek education was in general
more physical and moral than it was intellectual,and it consequently
made use more of actual music than of music as a theoreticand philosophic study. As a reflectionof aristocraticideals, it reallynever lost its
liberal interestsand its distrustof occupational training,and it aimed
at cultivationfor a leisuredway of life compounded of sportand intellectual pleasures,withpoliticalactivityas the typicalseriouspursuit.But
in the later fifthcentury,education took on a more purelyintellectual
202
intensityand a new ideal of wisdom. The scientificand philosophicaspects of music grew in importancealongside of practical music and for
the mostpart unrelatedto it. In thischange, the philosophersupplanted
the poet as an educator,and we can consequentlysee a particularlogic in
Plato's designationof philosophyas the highestmusic. But as philosophy
was music in an abstractsense more than an actual one, so the educational ideal it advocated was more one of musical science than of practical music. The stresson intellectualeducation did not necessarilyinvolve a discard of ethical cultivation,however,but only a change in
standards. Practical music was reinterpretedas a preparationfor the
rational trainingthat came afterward,although its direct social and
moral values were not overlooked.Much of the new outlook had been
anticipatedlong beforeby Xenophanes: he turnedto poetryratherthan
prose as a philosophicmedium,he recitedat symposia,thususurpingthe
positionof the poets,he took directissue withHomer in much the terms
Plato did, criticizinghim as immoral,and he advanced an intellectual
ratherthan a physicalideal. More subtly,Plato reducesgymnasticsto a
the soul ratherthan the body;1 but he by no means loses
matteraffecting
of
inherent
its
values, and seeks only to turn them back to their
sight
older significanceas preparationfor battle rather than for victoryin
athletic competition.Almost symbolically,in the Symposium,he explicitlyrelegates music to the category of entertainment,"while the
time of the company is spent in the higher activityof philosophical
discussion,the new and superiorkind of music. This is doubtlessa conscious depictionof new educational ideals, which Plato was quite ready
to view froma musical standpoint.With the Sophists,relativismcould
easily lead to a discard of music as an ethical force; in the world of
dialecticsand oratorythat theycreated it was to be retainedonly as an
emotional and technical aid to the speaker. But the renewed faith of
Socrates and Plato in an absolute moral standard brought with it a
belief in the older ethical values of music and in musical value in
general.Yet the nature of music was changing,and as the old unityfell
apart the educational ideals and curriculumbased on it changed also;
politicaland social changeswere a counterpart- or a result,as Damon
and Plato believed; the logical outcome was the destructionof the
polis and the growthof the cosmopolitancity,a process accompanied
and
by an equivalent disruptionof music. In attemptingto reinterpret
Republic, 410c-12b.
19Symposium, 176e. See also Protagoras, 347, where the entertainmentfurnished
by girls who dance and play the aulos and lyre is similarly set aside in favor of
discourse.
18
203
preservethe older ideals, Plato found himselfopposed to what was actually a more progressiveattitude,forphilosophyfoughtwith rhetoricover
the educational leadership abandoned by music, and rhetoricfrankly
accepted the musical disintegrationand the new intellectualspecialization, replacing universalitywith versatility.
In any event,the musical-poetictraditionreveals that the educative
functionof music existsin poetryof whatevertype,althoughthe precise
functionvaries with the genre. The teachingvalues of gnomic verse are
there for all to see, but even the philosophic epic evolved from the
didactic epic, and traces of its origin are still evident in so late a descendant as Lucretius.The motifof moral instruction,intimatelyallied
to music,runsthroughthe entirehistoryof Greekpoetryand philosophy,
and indeed throughall the literatureof antiquity.In its directaddressto
a singleindividual,the prose protrepticcontinuesthe mannerof didactic
and moral poetry;philosophyhas already adopted the device in Empedocles's time, and with Isocrates it becomes an establishedgenre. The
Epinomis (intended as a final section of Plato's Laws), Aristotle's
Protrepticus,Cicero's Hortensius,Boethius'sConsolation,and the patristic "Exhortation" are outstandingexamples. But vastlymore impressive
than the explicitexhortationis the Platonic dialogue itself,withitspowerful inspirationaleffect.The education of Greece was the high ethical
purpose that philosophycarriedover frompoetry,and if Homer was the
teacher of Greece, Plato became the teacher of the West. But in its
superiorrealizationof this purpose, philosophydirectedtowards poetry
not gratitudebut criticism.For poetrydid not deal in abstractargument;
it made use of feelingsand the concreteinstance. Furthermorepoetry
was degenerating,in Plato's opinion; it had lostsightof itssocial mission,
while those participatingin it became effeminateand depraved. The
actors in Atheniantragedystood on a plane vastlyinferiorto that of the
participantsin Dorian choral dance. It was symptomaticthat the aulos
had taken on a new popularity,and ornate musical styleshad appeared,
in conjunctionwith virtuosityand purely instrumentalmusic.20"Imitation ran riot,Plato tellsus, with attemptedduplicationsof the sounds of
nature and animals and various musical instruments;the citharoedic
singer imitated the quavering excitement of the aulos; modulation,
chromaticism,and a mixtureand confusionof stylesaccompanied a continuous search for novel effects,and music was dedicated to senseless
pleasure and applause.
20 Laws, 700a-Olc,
provides a picture of the moral decay of music and its
repercussionsin the earlier fourthcentury. See also Republic, 700a-b.
204
205
206
27 As an imitator alone, the artist has little claim to respect; if he really understood the objects he imitated, he would devote himself to them and not to art. See
Republic, 597d-602c.
28Even though issue can be taken with it in some respects, Hermann Abert's
study of the ethical character of the various constituentsof Greek music, Die Lehre
vom Ethos in der griechischen Musik, Leipzig, 1899, is still a basic and definitive
collection of the evidence, most of it unfortunatelyfrompost-classical sources.
207
29 See Franz Buecheler, Hoi peri Damona, in Rheinisches Museum 40, 1885;
Karl von Jan, Damon, in A. Pauly and G. Wissowa, eds., Real-Enzyklopiidie der
klassischen Altertumswissenschaft,
Stuttgart, 1893ff.; Heinrich Ryffel,Eukosmia; Ein
Beitrag zur Wiederherstellungdes Areopagitikos des Damon, in Museum Helviticum
4, 1947, and Lasserre, op. cit., pp. 53-79.
208
209
32 A
comprehensive examination of Hellenic musical ideas will be included in
my forthcomingbook on ancient conceptions of music.