Music as a means of social control: Some Examples of Practice and Theory in Early Modern Europe

In the early modern period (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries) the power of music to alter inner states was conducted in the language of the ‘passions’ rather than the emotions. In this paper I explore the extent to which early modern Europeans considered music as a vehicle for achieving social transformation through control of the passions. Typically for the period, Plato and Aristotle’s writings on music were a starting-point for discussion. I consider the attempts under the French king Charles IX (1550-1574) to ban certain types of music and also to promote a distinctively French form of ‘measured music’. A belief in the civilising effects of music is similarly found in the writings of Dr John Gregory (1724-1773), a Scottish physician and amateur musician who regarded music as a powerful vehicle for self-improvement and social integration.