Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

INSTRUMENTAL INSTITUTION

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ust as Plato was? pupfl of Socrates, so Aristotle was a pupil of Plato.

Born in Stagirus, Macedonia, in 384??, Aristotle studied with Mr P. at his Academy in Athens. Aristotle (wouldn't it be lovely if we could find evidence to suggest he was known as Ari to his friends?) was not a great musician, as such, but, like Plato before him, he applied his thinking to many areas of life, one of them being music. He, too, thought that music was MUCH more important than the simple aural pleasure that it gave. It had real ethical power, and it was vitally important in the process of education. He disagreed with Plato, though, on the subject of words. He was prepared to accept instrumental music, because, he thought, it spoke directly to the listener's emotions, unhindered by a poet's words. To him, music was almost homeopathic and certainly cathartic. If he were in charge today, you'd probably be able to get a prescription at the chemist's for string quartets, to be taken two or three times a day, with food.

His????, Aristoxenus, a generation later, took his thoughts and, ignoring almost all other areas of philosophy except music, came up with 'Elements of Harmonics' and 'Elements of Rhythm'. One of his principal theories was that the soul is to the body what harmony is to the musical instrument. He also moved away from the ideas of his former teachers, the Pythagoreans, by saying that you shouldn't work out notes of a scale by mathematical ratio alone, but also by ear.

Aristoxenus' dates are not known, exacdy, but presuming, as most do, that he was dead and curried by, at the latest, 300??, then what we are left with is what Greek scholars call 'megalos trypa aimatodis1, or, to translate, a bloody big gap. Nothing much happened until around 50??.