An introduction to musical pedagogy according to Ps.-Plutarch's De musica (and Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras)

Abstract

This paper analyses the pedagogical theories displayed in De Musica, an opuscule wrongly ascribed to Plutarch, whose anonymous author marshals notions by philosophers such as Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle or Aristoxenus, and later treatise writers publishing on music topics. This paper focalizes particularly on chapters 14-42, where the writer offers advice on how to learn about ‘superior’ music, which transcends actual musical practice and reaches out to mathematical and ethical knowledge. Perusing a selection of fragments, we have sought to explain how and in what type of contexts were philosophical music basics learned, what contents were involved and how they related to other musical cultural forms. We present and discuss the main passages in De Musica about philosophical harmony, especially the mathematical type, and about routes suggested to become a good musician and musical critic at once. We thus notice how important the study of ‘philosophical’ music was at this time, and how its practitioners had attained beforehand a complete musical and philosophical training: this level of music studies is approached through the reading and commentary of the works by ancient sages, but also attending to conferences in public and private contexts.