Music and the greeks

Interior Semantics Karl Paulnack , current director of the music division at the Boston Conservatory, began his speech to the freshman class with what probably is the greatest fear of any musicstudent: The fact that their work as a musician is not valued. For Paulnack music is as essential to society as any other occupation, whether it is a firefighter, a teacher or an officer. Butthe difference is that music has a much more profound and fundamental impact on the human being. For that, he refers to the ideology that the Greeks had on music, “One of the first cultures toarticulate how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you: the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin”. For the Greeks, astronomywas considered as the study of relationships between external objects and music was seen as the study of the relationship between the internal objects. He implicitly compares music with scienceand attempts to separate it from the world of arts. He disagrees with the fact that music should be considered as a form of entertainment. In his opinion, it is beyond than that. To support thisstatement he makes reference to some events and catastrophes in which society used music rather than any other art or science. From a natural disaster to a personal problem, you may end uplistening to music. Paulnack believes that the biggest impact this has is represented in something as simple as someone crying to a piece of music. It touches the deepest feelings and thesubconscious, and that takes us back to what the Greeks tried to explain. In my opinion, music should be seen not only as a form of entertainment but one of the most sincere forms of expression andinformation. Having an impact in almost everyone’s life is not easy, and according to the Greeks that is not the work of an artist but something even more complex: a scientist.


 

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