Topic summary
Musical mode
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Mode (music).
Philosophical harmoniai in Plato and Aristotle
In the Republic, Plato uses the term inclusively to encompass a particular type of scale, range and register, characteristic rhythmic pattern, textual subject, etc. Plato held that playing music in a particular harmonia would incline one towards specific behaviors associated with it, and suggested that soldiers should listen to music in Dorian or Phrygian harmoniai to help harden them but avoid music in Lydian, Mixolydian, or Ionian harmoniai, for fear of being softened. Plato believed that a change in the musical modes of the state would cause a wide-scale social revolution.