Subsection 3 Music as a remedy

Philosophers and physicians have prescribed many different means of cheering a sorrowful heart and diverting those fixed, absorbing cares and thoughts that cause so much distress in this illness. But in my judgement none works so promptly, none is so powerful or so suitable, as a cup of strong drink, cheerfulness, music, and lively company. Ecclesiasticus 40:20: “Wine and music gladden the heart.”

Rhazes, in the Continens, book 9, treatise 15; Altomari, chapter 7; Eliano Montalto, chapter 26; Ficino; and Benedetto Vittori of Faenza are almost excessive in their praise of it. Iacchinus calls it a most powerful medicine; Jason Pratensis calls it a most wonderful thing, deserving consideration, that can so soften the mind and quiet its stormy emotions. “Music is medicine for the sorrowful mind”: a roaring cannon against melancholy, to raise and revive the languishing soul.

It affects not only the ears but the arteries themselves, and the vital and animal spirits; it lifts the mind and makes it alert. Lemnius, Institutes, chapter 44.

It does this even for the dullest, sternest, and most sorrowful souls: it drives out grief with mirth, and if any clouds, dust, or dregs of care still lurk in our thoughts, it sweeps them all away with great power—John of Salisbury, Policraticus, book 1, chapter 6. Moreover, it does all this instantly: cheers the face, banishes severity, brings in gladness—Gerald of Wales, Topography of Ireland, chapter 12—shapes our conduct, and softens anger. Athenaeus, in the Deipnosophists, book 14, chapter 10, calls it an inexhaustible treasure to those who possess it. “Sweet-sounding music restores sorrowful hearts”—Eobanus Hessus.

Cassiodorus, letter 4, lists many other powers of this divine music of ours. It not only dispels the greatest griefs but lessens fears and fits of rage, calms cruelty, lightens sorrow, and gives peaceful rest to the sleepless; it removes ill will and hatred. Whether instrumental or vocal, played on strings or wind instruments—“governed by breath, without dexterity of the hands,” and so forth—it cures all the soul’s weariness and heaviness.

Labourers who sing at their work can testify to this, as can soldiers going into battle: the fear of death cannot frighten them as much as the trumpet, drum, fife, and similar music give them courage. For, as Censorinus tells us, “the fear of death is driven away by music.”

A nurse’s song quiets a child. Often a sudden trumpet call, ringing bells, a carter’s whistle, or a boy singing a ballad tune early in the street changes, revives, and refreshes a restless patient who cannot sleep at night, and so forth.

In a word, music is so powerful that it transports the soul. This “sovereign of the senses,” the queen of the senses, does so through sweet pleasure—a happy cure—and physical tunes soothe our immaterial soul: “speaking without a mouth, it exercises dominion over the soul,” carrying it beyond itself, aiding, raising, and enlarging it.

Scaliger, in exercise 302, explains these effects: the spirits around the heart draw that trembling, dancing air into the body and are moved and stirred along with it. Or else, as some suppose, the mind is itself composed in harmony and is awakened by musical tunes. Nor are human beings alone affected in this way: almost all other creatures are too.

You know the tale of the Gallic Hercules, Orpheus, and Amphion—“fortunate souls,” Ovid calls them—who could “move stones with the sound of the lyre,” and so forth: make logs and stones, as well as beasts and other animals, dance after their pipes. Dog and hare, wolf and lamb—“the lamb offered her flank beside the wolf”—and “the noisy jackdaw, the shrill crow, and Jupiter’s eagle,” as Philostratus describes them in his Images, all stood gazing open-mouthed at Orpheus.

And trees, uprooted, came to hear him: “The friendly pine draws the oak along as her companion.”

Arion made fish follow him; common experience shows that they are strongly affected by music. All songbirds take great pleasure in it, especially nightingales, if we may believe Calcagnini. Bees, too, though flying away, will stay behind when they hear a tinkling sound. Stags, hinds, horses, dogs, and bears take extraordinary delight in it—Scaliger, exercise 302. Agrippa adds elephants, in book 2, chapter 24. And in Lydia, in the middle of a lake, there are certain floating islands which, if you will believe it, dance to music.

But leaving these rhetorical praises of divine music, I will keep to my proper subject. Besides its remarkable power to drive out many other diseases, it is a supreme remedy for despair and melancholy, and will drive away the devil himself. In Philostratus, Canus, a Rhodian musician, was asked by Apollonius what he could do with his pipe. He replied that he could make a melancholy man cheerful, a cheerful man much more cheerful, a lover more enamoured, and a religious man more devout.

Ismenias the Theban and Chiron the centaur are said to have cured this and many other diseases by music alone, just as, Bodin says, people now treat those afflicted by the mad dance of Saint Vitus. Timotheus the musician made Alexander leap about and leave his dinner, like the tale of the Friar and the Boy; Augustine, in The City of God, book 17, chapter 14, praises him greatly for it.

Who has not heard how David’s music drove the evil spirits away from King Saul, in 1 Samuel 16? And when Elisha was greatly troubled by insistent kings, he called for a musician; when the musician played, the hand of the Lord came upon him, in 2 Kings 3.

Censorinus, On the Birthday, chapter 12, reports how the physician Asclepiades helped many people suffering from frenzy by this means: “the minds of the delirious, disturbed by illness.” Jason Pratensis, in his chapter on mania, gives many examples of Clinias and Empedocles curing some who were desperately melancholy and others who were mad through this music of ours.