Aristotle postpones consideration of the more technical side of music until Chapter vii, and digresses to discuss more fully how far free men, eleutheroi, should themselves learn to play musical instruments. He takes the view that in the interests of acquiring ‘correct’ musical taste and judgement, such skills should certainly be learned; but they must not be studied to a very high level of competence, which requires excessive application making the performer into a mere ‘mechanic’ (banausos), and so injuring his ability to attain a citizen’s ‘virtue’ (aretē). With the polemic against ‘low’ or ‘popular’ music in the final paragraph, compare Plato, Laws II in general, and II 700a ff. The chapter contains also a brief but interesting history of the chief Greek wind instrument, the auloi, the twin pipes; see S. Michaelides, The Music of Ancient Greece, An Encyclopaedia (London, 1978), pp. 42–6. (Note that the common translation of aulos, ‘flute’, is incorrect.)
1340b20 We must now return to a question raised earlier:1 must they learn music by singing themselves and playing instruments with their own hands, or not? Clearly, personal participation in playing is going to make a big difference to the quality of the person that will be produced, because it is impossible, or at any rate difficult, to produce sound judges of musical performances out of those who have never themselves played. (At the same time learning an instrument will provide children with a needed occupation. Archytas’2 rattle must be reckoned an excellent invention, for children cannot remain still, and they are given this toy to play with, so that they may be kept from smashing things about the house. Of course it is only suitable for the very young: for older children education is their rattle.) Such considerations thus make it clear that musical education must include participation in actual playing.
1340b33 It is not difficult to decide what is appropriate and what is not for different ages, or to find an answer to those who assert that to perform is the concern of a mechanic. First, since to join in the playing is needed to make a good judge, they should play the instruments while young and later, when they are older, give them up; they will then, thanks to what they have learned in their youth, be able to judge fine music and enjoy it in the right way. As for the objection, brought by some, that music makes them into mechanics, this can easily be answered if we consider to what extent persons who are being educated to exercise the virtue of a citizen ought to take part in the playing, what tunes and with what rhythms they are to play, and on what instruments they are to learn, for that too will probably make a difference. On the answers to these questions will depend the answer to the objection, since it is by no means impossible that certain styles of music do have the effect mentioned.3
1341a5 It is clear, then, that learning music must not be allowed to have any adverse effect on later activities, nor to turn the body into that of a mechanic, ill-fitted for the training of citizen or soldier – ill-fitted, that is, both for the lessons in youth and for the application of them in later years. Such a result can be avoided if the pupil does not struggle to acquire the degree of skill that is needed for professional competitions, or to perform those peculiar and sensational pieces of music which have penetrated the competitions and thence education. Musical exercises should not be of this kind, and should be pursued only up to the point at which the pupil becomes capable of enjoying fine melodies and rhythms, and not just the feature4 common to all music, which appeals even to some animals, and also to a great many slaves and children.
1341a17 From these considerations we can also see what kinds of musical instruments ought to be employed. We must not permit the introduction of pipes into education, or of any other instrument that requires the skill of a professional, the lyre and such-like, but only such as will make good students, whether in their musical education or in their education in general. Furthermore, the pipes are not an instrument of ethical but rather of orgiastic5 effect, so their use should be confined to those occasions on which the effect produced by the show is not so much instruction as a way of working off the emotions.6 We may add to the educational objections the fact that playing on the pipes prevents one from employing speech.
1341a26 For these reasons our predecessors were right in prohibiting the use of the pipes by the young and by free men, though at an earlier period it was permitted. This is what took place: as resources increased, men had more leisure and acquired a loftier pride7 in standards of virtue; and both before and after the Persian wars, in which their success had increased their self-confidence, they fastened eagerly upon learning of every kind, pursuing all without distinction; and hence even playing on the pipes was introduced into education. At Sparta there was a chorus-leader8 who himself piped for his chorus to dance to, and at Athens playing the pipes took such firm root that many, perhaps the majority, of the free men took part in it. Thrasippus, who acted as chorus-trainer for Ecphantides, dedicated a tablet9 which makes that clear. But at a later date, as a result of actual experience, the playing of pipes went out of favour, as men became better able to discern what tends to promote virtue and what does not. Many of the older instruments were similarly rejected, for example the plucker, the barbitos, and those which merely titillate the ear, the heptagon, triangle, sambuca, and all those that require manual dexterity.10 There is sound sense too in the story told by the ancients about the pipes – that Athena invented them and then threw them away. It may well be, as the story adds, that the goddess did this because she disliked the facial distortion which their playing caused. But a far more likely reason is that an education in playing upon the pipes contributes nothing to the intellect; to Athena, after all, we ascribe knowledge and skill.
1341b8 We reject then a professional11 education in the instruments and their performance – professional in the sense of competitive, for in this kind of education the performer does not perform in order to improve his own virtue, but to give pleasure to the listeners, and vulgar pleasure at that. We do not, therefore, regard such performing as a proper occupation for free men; it is rather that of a hireling. The consequences are to degrade the players into mechanics, since the end towards which the performance is directed is a low one. The listener is a common person and usually influences the music accordingly, so that he has an effect both on the personality of the professionals themselves who perform for him, and, because of the motions which they make, on their bodies too.