Proemium. That Music Is Naturally Joined to Us, and Either Ennobles or Corrupts Our Character.

Perception and Understanding

The perception of the senses is present to all living creatures so spontaneously and by nature that without it no animal can be conceived. But knowledge of those same senses cannot be arrived at by just any inquiry with equal firmness of understanding. For we apply our senses to perceiving sensible things; but the nature of the sensible things themselves — those properties of things according to which we act — cannot be made obvious and explicable to just anyone unless investigation directed by reasoning has led the way. For sight is present to all mortals, but whether a shape approaching us is effected by rays sent out from the eyes or by images received in the eyes is doubtful to the learned; the common man, however, is not even troubled by the doubt. Again, when anyone looks at a triangle or a square, he easily recognizes what he sees with his eyes; but what the nature of a square or a triangle is, he must needs seek from a mathematician. The same can be said of the other senses, and especially of the judgment of the ears, whose power so apprehends sounds that it not only seizes their differences and takes cognizance of them, but is often delighted if the modes are sweet and well-fitted together, while it is pained and distressed if they are dissonant and incoherent. From this it follows that, since there are four mathematical disciplines, the others are concerned with the investigation of truth, but music is joined not only to speculation but to morality as well. For nothing is so characteristic of human nature as to be soothed by sweet modes and braced by their contraries; and this holds not only for individual studies or ages, but extends through all pursuits — children, young men, and the old are so naturally drawn to musical modes that no age is altogether without delight in sweetness of song.

Music, Morality, and the Soul

From this one may perceive what Plato rightly held: that the soul of the universe is knit together by musical concord. For when, through what is joined and fitted together in us, we receive a melody that is likewise joined and fitted, we recognize and love that likeness in it, and by that same likeness we are drawn to be compacted together with it. Like is friendly to like, unlike is hateful and contrary. From this the greatest changes in one’s character also come about. A lascivious mind either takes delight in more lascivious modes or is often softened and broken by hearing them. Again, a rougher mind either rejoices in more exciting modes or is hardened by them. This is why musical modes are named after peoples: thus the Lydian mode and the Phrygian. For whatever mode a given people especially enjoys, that mode is named after that people’s name. A people delights in modes after the similitude of its character; for it is not possible for gentle things to be joined to harsh, or harsh to gentle, but love and delight, as it has been said, are brought about by similitude. Therefore Plato considers it a matter of the greatest importance that no change be made in well-ordered music; for he denies that there is any greater ruin of morality in a commonwealth than the gradual inversion of modest and restrained music. For immediately those same souls of the hearers begin to suffer and little by little to abandon every trace of honesty and rectitude, if either through more wanton modes something shameless steals in upon the mind, or through harsher modes something fierce and wild.

Plato and the Guardians of Music

No discipline is more open to the soul than music by way of the ears. When rhythm and modes penetrate the soul’s innermost recesses, there can be no doubt that they affect the mind and conform it to their own character. This can be understood also from the fact that fiercer peoples delight in harsher modes, while gentle and civilized peoples take pleasure in more moderate ones — though at this time there is almost no instance of this. Wanton and theatrical music, because it is the soft and effeminate kind, has seized the whole of human nature, entirely given over to theatrical and scenic modes. Modest music, while it was cultivated with simpler instruments, was virtuous; but where it has been variously handled, it has lost the stamp of virtue and gravity and has nearly fallen to a base condition, preserving only the minimum trace of its ancient dignity. Hence Plato prescribes that boys should not be trained in all modes, but rather in those that are vigorous and simple. Above all it must be held that if in any way the smallest change is made here, something will straightway scarcely be felt; but then it makes a great difference, and it sinks down by degrees into the soul through the ears even to the level of character. Hence Plato considers it a great concern of the commonwealth that well-ordered and modest music be preserved — modest and simple and masculine, not effeminate nor wild nor varied. The Lacedaemonians preserved this above all.

Pythagoras and the Young Man of Taormina

There is no path more open to the soul through discipline than through the ears. Who does not know that Pythagoras restored a certain young man of Taormina — roused to frenzy by the sound of the Phrygian mode — to a calmer and more composed state by performing a spondee? For when a whore was shut in a rival’s house and that frenzied youth, wanting to set the house on fire, would not desist from his violence despite the many warnings of his friends, Pythagoras — who as was his custom was observing the course of the stars by night — upon learning this, ordered that the mode be changed, and so tempered the furor of the raging young man’s spirit to a state of perfect composure. What Marcus Tullius records about this in the book he composed on his own consulship is told in the same vein, though differently: “But that I may compare the greatest things to the smallest, just as when violent young men, incited by the music of the aulos, were about to break down the door of a chaste woman, Pythagoras is said to have advised the aulos-player to play a spondee; and when she had done so, the slowness of the rhythms and the gravity of the performer caused the raging fury of those intoxicated ones to subside.” But to gather briefly similar examples: Terpander and Arion of Methymna rescued the people of Lesbos and Ionia from the most grave diseases by the aid of song. Ismenias the Theban is said to have driven away with modes all the torments of ischiac pain from those who were suffering from it. And Empedocles too, when a certain raging man was about to attack a guest with a sword because that man had accused his father, is said to have changed the mode of his singing and thereby calmed the young man’s wrath. So greatly did the power of musical art penetrate the studies of ancient philosophy that the Pythagoreans used to dispel the cares of the day in sleep by certain songs, so that a gentle and quiet sleep would come upon them.

On waking they would drive away the stupor of sleep and confusion of mind with other modes — knowing that the whole composition of our soul and body is bound together by musical concord. For just as the movements of the body are stirred by the movements of the pulse, as Democritus is said to have communicated to Hippocrates the physician, when he visited him while he was being kept in custody for treating Democritus’s citizens as though mad — so it cannot be doubted that the state of our soul and body is in some way constituted by the same proportions as musical harmonies, and a subsequent argument will show that these can be joined together and made clear.

The Lacedaemonian Decree

The Lacedaemonians took this as their greatest instrument of preservation; and in their time Thaletas the Cretan, surnamed Gortynius, was admitted among them at great price to imbue their boys with the discipline of the musical art. For it was the custom in antiquity that there should be greater care in this matter. In this matter also, the Lacedaemonians preserved a decree.

[Editorial Note: Here Boethius quotes in full the Lacedaemonian decree against Timotheus of Miletus, preserved in Greek in the manuscripts (Friedlein pp. 182–184). The decree condemns Timotheus for arriving at Sparta and dishonoring ancient music; for constructing a many-voiced and novel kind of music in place of the traditional seven-string kithara; for corrupting the ears of the young with a multitude of strings and the novelty of his art; and for introducing the chromatic genus in place of the enharmonic. It orders that the extra strings beyond the traditional seven be cut from his instrument, and that he be shown publicly to receive just punishment so that the youth not be corrupted by his innovations. The Greek text of the decree is severely and variously corrupted across all manuscript witnesses; Friedlein’s critical apparatus for this passage runs to nearly a full page of variant readings across codices f, h, k, l, o, C, P₁, P₂, P₃.]

The Spartans were angered at Timotheus of Miletus, because, by introducing a many-voiced music into the minds of the boys he had accepted to educate, he was obstructing them and steering them away from the modesty of virtue, and because he had inverted the harmony, which he had received in a modest form, into the chromatic genus, which is softer. So great therefore was the diligence of those men concerning music that they judged it capable of taking possession even of minds.

Why Music Cannot Be Separated from Us

Commonly put, song has often restrained anger and accomplished many wonderful things in the affections of the body and the soul. Hence it is that infants are delighted by sweet melody; all ages and both sexes are held fast by it — though all things be distributed according to each person’s own doings, they are joined together in one by the delight of music. What happens when those in grief modulate their lamentations in song? What is most evidently womanish — that a song becomes sweeter as the cause for weeping — was also the case in antiquity, when the song of the tibia preceded lamentations. Witness is Papinius Statius in this verse:

“The curved horn bellows low, the tibia, accustomed to lead out the tender shades.”

And one who cannot sing sweetly nevertheless sings to himself — not because what he sings gives him some pleasure through the act itself, but because he delights in giving expression to the sweetness somehow innate in the soul, in whatever way he gives it expression. Do we not plainly see that the spirits of men in battle are roused by the music of trumpets? If this is so, then from a calm state of soul anyone is drawn toward fury and wrath by a more turbulent mode — and a more moderate mode can draw back a mind already disturbed toward wrath or immoderate desire. For when anyone willingly receives a melody with ears and mind, he turns to it — so that the body too is moved in some fashion in the likeness of the heard melody — and altogether the soul which has heard some tune, cannot forget it however much it wills to. From all of this it clearly and plainly appears that music is naturally joined to us, so that we cannot, even if we wished, be without it. Therefore the power of the mind must be directed so that what nature has instilled may also be grasped by knowledge. For just as in sight it does not suffice for the learned to see colors and shapes, unless they also investigate what the nature of these things is, so it does not suffice to be delighted by musical melodies, unless one also learns by what proportion of voices they are joined together.