Philo on Music

Abstract

hilo is generally recognized as one of the most influential philosophers of the Graeco-Roman era. Yet his references to music-unlike those of his predecessors Plato and Aristotle, or of his successors St. Augustine and Boethius-have remained buried in his voluminous writings. There is some justification for this neglect. Philo was not concerned with music theory, as were the philosophers mentioned above. Whatever he says about music is characteristic of his period rather than original. As an educated Jew, son of a wealthy Roman civil servant, living in the sophisticated Grecian society of Alexandria at the time of Christ, he explored the musical traditions transmitted through the Old Testament and Plato to his contemporaries. He was aware of performance practices and musical thoughts around him and used his musical knowledge and observations for frequent and telling illuminations of his philosophic treatises. All ancient civilizations seem to have placed music at the source of their religious and cultural experiences. In his brilliant interpretation of Indian philosophy, for instance, Antonio de Nicolas writes: It is essential ... that we get ourselves ready to move, in one swift jump, from the prosaic, discursive, lengthy and conceptual ground on which we are accustomed to stand, into the moving, shifting, resounding, evanescent, vibrating and always sounding ... musical world on which the Rg Veda stands.' An approach of this kind to the Bible yields meanings with which Philo and his generation were well familiar. His exegesis of the Creation, to give an example, abounds in musical analogies, allegories, and metaphors, of which the following is a good representative (De opificio mundi 89-128).