(b Stagirus, 384 bce; d Chalcis, 322 bce). Greek philosopher.
1. Theories of sense perception and ethical behaviour.
2. Symbolism, number, harmonic theory.
6. General characteristics of Aristotelian thought.
7. Influence on his successors.
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN
In order to consider Aristotle's views on music, it is necessary to make some reference to the theories of sense perception and ethical behaviour on which they are based. His treatise On the Soul defines perceiving as the process of acquiring the form, or mental image, of an object. Considered in subjective terms, it is a developing of the potential into the actual, since a thing cannot become what it is not (424a18–19, 425b23–4, 417b2–7). The attitudes that characterize an individual have thus always existed potentially within him; music can evoke them, but it cannot implant them.
According to the same treatise, every affection (pathos) of the soul involves a concurrent affection of the body (403a16–19). Bodily affections, however, cannot cause movement in the soul, which is the unmoved mover. This definition of the soul occurs in On the Movement of Animals, which includes an account of how it initiates action. In matters of conduct the object of desire or of the intellect causes movement. Here the motive is at best a relative good; true beauty and goodness cannot be relative, hence the soul moves but is not moved (700b17–701a2). Nowhere in Aristotle is there a sufficiently full explanation of the complex relationship between soul and body, nor is active reason ever adequately accounted for, particularly as a factor in sensation and reaction. The main outlines of his doctrine, however, can be discerned in this broad area of theory.
Ethical attitudes, defined in the Metaphysics (1022b4–14) as dispositions towards evil or good, are expressed through actions of a corresponding nature. Virtue and vice come under close examination in the second book of the Nicomachean Ethics (1103a14–1106a24; abbreviated below to Ethics); certain statements may be taken as representative. Moral virtue (or ‘excellence’) is described as being a result of habituation. ‘Like attitudes arise from like activities’, and virtues are created and fostered by observing due measure rather than excess or deficiency, and by thus keeping to the principle of the mean. Aristotle held that an action is meaningful and may be termed unequivocally just only when it expresses the pre-existing inward nature of the agent.
Accordingly, an action undertaken by accident, or at the suggestion of another person, does not qualify; and yet this second possibility touches upon the central nature of Paideia. The point has vital importance for music, which was accorded so prominent a role in elementary schooling that masters were universally known as kitharistai, ‘teachers of the kithara’. Here the difficulty is only a seeming one: in the Physics (247b18–248a2) Aristotle showed his unwillingness to hold restless children accountable by adult standards such as those of the Ethics. In later life a man does become accountable; and by that time, both Plato and Aristotle believed, his taste should have become properly formed.
The argument of the Ethics goes on to set forth the criteria of a just or wise act. Unlike a fine work of art, which is required merely to have its own self-contained excellence, such an act must satisfy the three further requirements of deliberate intent, disinterestedness and constancy of disposition. Virtues are therefore different from skills; and as one example of a skill Aristotle cited music, using a neuter plural form (ta mousika) for which the English term ‘music’ provides a general equivalent. This example of the way in which Aristotle attenuated the old concept of mousikē, in which music and literature were joined together, is unobtrusive but far from insignificant.
Aristotle thus prepared the ground for a definition of virtue in general. Together with the individual virtues, it must be an attitude of the soul rather than a capacity or feeling – specifically that attitude which causes a man to become good and to perform his special function well. At this point the relevant arguments of the Ethics conclude. It remains to note the definitive comments in the Physics on the nature of alteration (alloiōsis): neither acquired states nor the process of acquiring or losing them may properly be considered instances of alteration. These states are either examples of excellence, or defects; and ‘excellence is a perfection … while a defect is a perishing of or departure from this condition’, whether of body or of soul (245b3–247a8).
Unlike Plato, Aristotle avoided musical symbolism, chiefly because of his quite different attitude towards Pythagorean number theory. This theory, he said, had developed out of the discovery that the ratios of the harmoniai or modes could be expressed numerically. Unfortunately it had led to the claim that ‘the whole heaven is a harmonia and a number’ and to the charming but untrue notion of the harmony of the spheres. In its debased popular form as numerology, it produced such fantasies as the belief that the number of notes on the aulos, 24 in all, ‘equals that of the whole choir of heaven’. All this, according to Aristotle, proceeds out of the mistaken fundamental idea that real things are numbers (Metaphysics, 985b32–986a2, 1090a20–23, 1093a28–b4; On the Heavens, 290b21–3).
The fact that harmonic relationships such as the 5th and octave can be expressed mathematically is quite another matter. Aristotle often referred to this, and he classified harmonics, the technical theory of music, as a physical science. Although the harmonia itself is usually presented as fact, there are noteworthy exceptions to this rule. In the Politics (1254a32–3) it illustrates the idea of a ruling principle even in inanimate things, and according to the Metaphysics (1018b29), in the lyra this principle is the note called mesē (‘middle’) – a statement which never has been satisfactorily explained. Pseudo-Plutarch's On Music (1139) cites Aristotle as having called the harmonia ‘celestial’ because its nature is ‘divine, noble and marvellously wrought’, but also as adding that in operation it is quadripartite and embodies two kinds of mean, the arithmetic and the harmonic. These added comments show his characteristic position; it becomes unmistakably clear in the flat statement that the harmonia consists of notes alone, and again in his equally flat denial that either of its main meanings (‘arrangement’, ‘ratio’) may properly be used to describe the soul (Topics, 139b37–8; On the Soul, 408a5–10).
When he discussed mode as such, Aristotle seems to have had in mind not the harmoniai of the 5th century but instead the complex of interchangeable sequences that by this time had probably replaced them. He noted that the Dorian and Phrygian were considered by some to be the chief modal categories, subsuming the other modes (Politics, 1290a19–22). This happened in the case of the Aeolian and Iastian modes, renamed, during the process of systematization, Hypodorian and Hypophrygian respectively. It is also a familiar fact that the Lydian, with its related modes, was for a long time in disfavour. Two points seem noteworthy here: Aristotle relied on the opinions of others, as he often did when discussing modality; in this deference to authority, moreover, he was willing to grant the Phrygian a place of chief importance, even though he criticized Plato for having allowed it in the ideal city-state of the Republic.
Like his great teacher, however, Aristotle often stressed the importance of the role of music in education, and he agreed with the Platonic definition of correct education as a training to experience pleasure and pain in the right way. His own definition (Politics, 1340a15) follows it closely. When he took up in the Ethics the question of the manner in which pleasure relates to goodness and happiness, he supported his answer with a parallel involving music. The case is the same, he said, with the man who is musical: such a person enjoys good melodies and is pained by bad ones (1170a6–11). Here the adjectives are not ethical but refer to technique (cf 1105a27–33). They express the trained responses of an expert. The appearance of such a figure, like that of the polymath, foreshadows the beginning of the Hellenistic age. Yet Aristotle belonged to the Hellenic period, as its last great representative. Normally, therefore, he directed his attention not to the scholarship of music but to the much broader field of musical and literary training known as mousikē. Examining the role of music in education, he saw that it had a good or bad influence according to the attitude it fostered. The postulates of his system kept him from applying such terms to the actual hearing of music, for the latter is not an attitude of the soul but only an affection (pathos), something that one experiences.
The one extended examination of the paideutic aspects and values of music, unique not merely in the vast body of Aristotle’s works but in the whole of surviving Hellenic literature, is to be found in the final chapters of the Politics (1339a11–1342b34). It is preceded by a brief attempt to determine why ‘the ancients’ made music a part of paideia. This ends with the explanation that it is ‘useful for rational enjoyment [diagōgē] in leisure’ (1338a22–3). Nowhere is there a recognition of its liturgical use; one will look in vain for the devoutness of a Plato. In both respects the prelude evokes something of the tone that marks the central discussion of music. From that long and complex examination a limited number of arguments will be cited, normally in the order of the text.
Aristotle set out to determine whether the proper paideutic end of music is amusement, moral betterment or the enriching of cultivated leisure and practical wisdom (phronēsis). He found all three possibilities promising but unequal in merit. At length he returned to the original question and shaped it in a slightly different form, omitting wisdom: education, amusement and cultivated leisure are now the possibilities; the paideutic function of music has become one of them. Its effectiveness, he concluded, presumably applies to all three. The proofs which he then added, however, touch only upon the second and third, and show the pleasure that music gives naturally and indiscriminately. Surmising that its essential nature might be more honourable than this incidental aspect would suggest, he raised the possibility that it somehow also reaches the character and the soul. Obviously it influences us in this way, he continued; and at this point an intricate series of statements and conjectures begins, concerned in every instance with aspects of Ethos theory.
Especially challenging is the claim (1340a12–14, as emended by Susemihl) that purely instrumental music possesses ethical force through its rhythms and melodies. The mimetic aspect of his theory emerges in the claim that these contain ‘likenesses’ (homoiōmata) or imitations of all the emotions and ethical states. Proof is found in the varying effects of individual harmoniai and rhythms as propounded by certain experts; the latter are described but not named, and their identity remains uncertain. Children must therefore be educated in music, Aristotle concluded. It is naturally pleasurable, and we ‘seem to have a certain affinity with modes and rhythms’. His presentation, taken as a whole, raises many questions. The attribution of ethos to instrumental music without a sung or recited text (a clear attempt to refute Plato) can be defended on several grounds. The proofs throughout are strikingly empirical, however, with very little theory of any kind as a balance; the evidence is derivative; and the reader is left with no explanation either of the ‘likenesses’ or of the affinity of the soul with mode and rhythm (asserted also in the Poetics, 1448b20–21). It is true that Aristotle's death cut short the task of completing the Politics, and that the treatise devoted to music remains tantalizingly among the lost works.
Passing to the consideration of music lessons and the choice of an instrument, Aristotle counselled that actual performance be limited to childhood. Maturity should bring ethical discretion, based upon this early training. His next point, the admission that some kinds of music may be vulgarizing, seems a digression. It is linked to what has preceded it, however, by strong though implicit reservations about the role of instruments, especially in solo performance. To play the aulos or kithara as a soloist required some degree of professionalism and virtuosity, qualities associated with the vulgar rather than the freeborn man. This had even influenced lyre study in the schools: Aristotle sought to abolish from the curriculum showpieces that demand ‘marvellous and extraordinary’ displays of technique. He also believed that the aulos must be banned, on the ground that it is distracting and exciting rather than morally beneficial. When he therefore described it as belonging to occasions which produce purgation (katharsis) rather than instruction, he was in a sense denying ethical effectiveness to tragedy as well. Although he raised the further point that learning to play the aulos has nothing to do with the intellect, he never said that the case was different with other instruments used alone. It will be recalled that when the question of the purpose of music is reintroduced, the furthering of practical wisdom no longer appears among the possibilities. Aristotle's strong belief in the ethical power of purely instrumental music has also been noted. This, and the fact that he regularly spoke of music in connection with the ethical rather than the intellectual virtues (although he classified it as a skill), suggests his attitude concerning its relation to the active reason.
Several points that have been mentioned illustrate the ways in which Aristotle’s approaches differed from those of Plato. Besides clashing deliberately with his teacher on the subject of the ethos of instrumental music, Aristotle went beyond him in seeking to ban the kithara from education. This may be a sign of an increase in professionalism, with its emphasis upon solo playing. The apparent denial of any ethical potential to tragedy furnishes another instance of disagreement. In every case, the difference may be ascribed to differing concepts of paideia.
For Plato it was a lifelong process. His consequent belief that audiences ought always to be exposed to an ethic higher than their own made him object to vulgar dramatic performances as well as vulgar music. Probably the same concern underlay his remark in the Gorgias that tragedy is primarily hedonistic; this description is certainly an ethical one (502b1–c1).
For Aristotle, however, paideia had its restricted sense of elementary schooling, valuable for mature life; and he no longer felt the unity of literary text and musical accompaniment that had been central to the idea of mousikē. It was possible for him, therefore, to look calmly at the reality of solo instrumental music performed in public. He could even say that such music should be no better than its audience. Where music and morals are concerned, this marks the extreme point of difference between the two philosophers.
The closing section of the Politics deals exclusively with the modes; a promised treatment of the rhythms is not found in the extant portion of the text. Leaving detailed analysis to the experts, Aristotle accepted their division of melodies into three categories and their assignment of individual modes to each category. The types are the ‘ethical’, productive of moral betterment; the ‘practical’, productive of action; and the ‘enthusiastic’ or ‘passionate’, productive of emotional excitement. Also, and for the fourth time, he listed the proper ends of music: education, purgation and the cultivation of leisure. Once again the possibility of wisdom has been passed over; and the inclusion of leisure on all four occasions is an unmistakable step towards the recognition of a distinctively aesthetic province of judgment.
A discriminating use of all the modes is proper, Aristotle concluded. The proposal that follows shows his pragmatism and his avoidance of Plato's moral criticism: he recommended that the most markedly ‘ethical’ types be used for education and the other two types for public performances by professionals. He advocated separate competitions and public spectacles for freeborn, educated men and for the common crowd, supporting his contention with the remark already noted. His added explanation that all men enjoy what is naturally suited to them further emphasizes his great divergence from Platonic ideals. Moreover, the triple division of melodies and modes allows much more freedom than Plato ever permitted. Probably an important purpose of this freedom is to provide for the range of moods in the aulos music used to accompany performances of tragedy. To be sure, the theory does not seem consistent with a recognition of only two modes and a corresponding view of the others as composite rearrangements of them (1290a19–29, part of which has been discussed above); but the latter view is merely mentioned, not espoused.
The last 18 lines of the Politics may be passed over as probably the work of a late interpolator. There can be no other explanation, at any rate, for the praise of Lydian modality as particularly suitable for paideia. Immediately before these lines, Aristotle attacked Plato for allowing the use of the Phrygian in the Republic. He himself was, of course, willing to have Dorian used in the schools, together with whatever other modes the experts might recommend. Everyone agrees that Dorian is outstanding for its sedateness and manly ethos, he noted. Adding a comment of his own, he characterized its relation to the other modes as that of a mean between extremes. The reference here may be to the system of octave species, in which the Dorian does occupy such a position.
Broadly considered, Aristotle's comments on music create a mixed impression. As one would expect, the theoretical basis is difficult but impressive. Occasionally its principles lead to ostensible anomalies, as occurs when tragedy apparently proves to be both ethical and non-ethical: tragedy deals with problems of character, unquestionably, yet it is cathartic rather than paideutic, and it lacks the vital element of habituation. Apart from such exceptional instances, his theory provides a sound foundation.
The resulting structure has a number of valuable features. A sane and tolerant recognition of the value of music as a part of the good life – the life of cultured leisure – is certainly one of them; and they include many points of useful detail. Yet the whole is somehow less than the sum of the parts. It must be admitted that music makes no significant contribution to Aristotelian doctrine. When modality and rhythm come under discussion, much of the theoretical material proves to be derivative, and central questions such as the purpose of music receive shifting answers. Superstition and loose thinking are demolished; whether any adequate system replaces them may be questioned. It is essentially as a supplement to the more committed and ethically sensitive thought of Plato that Aristotle's contribution to the history and analysis of Greek musical culture is significant.
Although he had no comparable link with any successor, Aristotle established for the future not only general techniques of argument but also specific views on music. The Pseudo-Aristotelian Problems, a later collection concerned in part with music, reflects these views, together with the doctrines of his pupils, especially Theophrastus. Aristoxenus, the most outstanding music theorist trained by Aristotle, demonstrated that training by the use of categories for the analytical definition of musical concepts, and in particular by reliance upon the ear. Even his counterbalancing belief that serious students must also rely upon ‘right judgment’ probably draws upon the concept of ‘right reason’, familiar from the Nicomachean Ethics.
During the two centuries that followed, the Stoics turned to the Aristotelian corpus for an analysis of emotional response to music. They elaborated these beginnings into a highly detailed system which underlies the arguments employed by Diogenes of Babylon, a philosopher of the 2nd century bce whose views on music survive through his Epicurean contemporary and adversary, Philodemus. The emphasis that Diogenes placed upon the role of the listener may perpetuate a genuinely Aristotelian view, hinted at in the Problems.
By the late 9th century ce the Problems, together with On the Soul and History of Animals (unquestionably authentic), had become well known to Muslim philosophers and music theorists through translations into Arabic and Syriac.
In the West, Aristotle's works largely (though not entirely) faded into obscurity until the 12th century, when figures such as Abelard and especially Thierry of Chartres (in his Heptateuchon) undertook to revive and apply Aristotelian logic in their writing and teaching. By the end of the 12th century a large selection of Aristotle's logical, metaphysical, ethical and scientific treatises were available in Latin and were being studied in Paris. At the beginning of the 13th century the Paris Council of 1210 condemned Aristotle's works on natural philosophy, but this condemnation was quickly modified and by the early 1230s Aristotle was again the focus of intense study. In the Statute of the Faculté des Arts (dated 19 March 1255), the logical, metaphysical and scientific treatises of Aristotle formed the greater part of the texts to be studied (see Huglo, pp.152–60), and Aristotelian methods and terminology appear prominently in the music treatises of Johannes de Garlandia, Magister Lambertus, the Anonymous of 1279, Franco of Cologne, Anonymous 4, Johannes de Grocheio, Hieronymus de Moravia and Elias Salomo, all of them written after 1255 in or under the influence of Paris. By the 14th century Aristotelianism was fully established in music theory, and in one form or another it has continued to exert an influence to the present day.
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