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Ezra Millstein's avatar

Jewish prayer and Jewish law are inextricably related. Prayers--I.e.laws--have been sung from the beginning

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Alan's avatar

"Orpheus ruled a harmonious kingdom by music alone, and the power of music was so well known to ancient rulers that they prohibited all modes but those which contributed to the enchantment of their realms. Plato himself said that forms of music proceed and determine forms of government."

John Michell, Twelve Tribe Nations:

“ancient rulers specified certain lawful scales that had to be followed in all musical compositions. The reason for this was that they recognized music as the most influential of all arts, appealing directly to the human temper, and thus a potential cause of disturbance in their carefully ordered canonical societies....

"If only we knew the true canonical forms of music, says the Athenian, there could be no valid objection to making them compulsory by law..

"The mythological account of social origins, which naturally appeals to poets, identifies the first human rulers as the Orphic bards, who kept order by music alone, enchanting whole countries with a cycle of songs in harmony with the changing seasons. Plato in Critias says that these rulers were divine: “They did not use physical means of control, like shepherds who direct their flock with blows, but brought their influence to bear on the creature’s most sensitive part [which Plato elsewhere states to be susceptibility to music], using persuasion as the steersman uses the helm, to direct the mind and so guide the whole mortal creature.”

"Thereafter, so it is said, arose a caste of priests and law-giving Druids, who reduced the bardic chants to a strict canon and enforced by violence the laws that previously had been gently uttered and spontaneously obeyed. Thus was the gold of primeval times diluted with baser metal, a process that seemingly reflects the change from nomadic life and the reign of free spirit to settled communities under the rule of law....

"The institution of the temple was an attempt to perpetuate those legendary days when government was conducted through the influence of music rather than by means of a rigid code of law. “A relic of those days may be seen in the tradition of the Perpetual Choirs of Britain....

"a revival program aimed at restoring the musical enchantment with which the ancient bards held a whole country in harmony with the heavens...

"Encoded in Timaeus’s brief history of creation is the essential knowledge that Plato distilled through his study of traditional science. Among its contents are the canon of musical harmony that determined the forms of government in the ancient world..."

John Michell, The Dimensions of Paradise

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