Music, humanist education, and the social power of sound from antiquity to Beethoven
Music, music culture, and humanist education
Throughout the history of human development and civilization, music has occupied a dual role as both an art form and a mode of cultural communication. It has always been central to human existence, capable of cultural expression across widely different societies (Blacking, 1995).
The impact of music on social movements has been deeply felt, helping to shape collective identities and motivate action in contemporary life (Davis & Evans, 2022). Music plays a vital part in enabling intercultural communication, giving diverse populations a framework through which they can connect and understand one another (Grant, 2022). A person's emotional bond with music is intimately tied to their individual identity and cultural heritage, shaping how they perceive and engage with the world (Zhang, 2022).
This study investigates various dimensions of music's role in society from an historical and theoretical perspective. It examines ancient philosophical views on music's power and influence — including those of Aristotle and Schopenhauer — and highlights how music can unite people across cultural and ethnic lines. By analyzing music's educational and societal effects, this work aims to demonstrate that music functions as a universal code that transcends boundaries and offers benefits for personal development.
Since ancient times, the arts have formed an essential part of daily existence, acting as vehicles for communication and the transmission of ideas. Music is inherent to human life. As an expressive art that conveys emotions, thoughts, and artistic concepts through sound, it creates powerful emotional experiences and interacts with other artistic fields. Music expresses spiritual and mental states, and as a science, it studies the natural phenomenon of sound, determining pitch, duration, and the relationships between sounds. As John Blacking (1955, cited in Sadler Elmer, 2000:21) asserts, music arises solely from human behavior, produced by humans as an expression of "Musica Humana" that reflects the spiritual world of its creator.
Through the art of music, a creator engages with the external environment, experiencing concerns, inner tension, or even visions of the future. Listeners identify various psychological and spiritual aspects or shared ideological intersections with the musician, recognizing parts of themselves and suppressed emotions, which helps them achieve self-understanding. Music offers knowledge grounded in experience, tied to human personality; people respond spontaneously with their entire being when exposed to music. In his 1844 treatise "The Metaphysics of Music," Schopenhauer wrote: "Music, unlike all other arts, does not present ideas or the levels of subjectivity in art, but rather is 'responsible' for the direct effect on the will, influencing the preferences, feelings, and passions of the listener by increasing, developing, and shaping them." (Schopenhauer, 1966, p. 123). Because music stimulates and activates the spiritual and psycho-physical realms, it plays a significant role in maintaining, improving, and reconciling external impressions with internal ones, and in many cases, mental recovery is observed through it.
Materials and methods
This study takes a historical and analytical approach, drawing on scholarly texts, documented histories, and philosophical treatises to form a comprehensive picture of music as a human asset for societal function. Drawing on seminal works by ethnomusicologists and philosophers, the analysis examines historical instances where music was believed to influence societal or individual behavior. This enables a deeper understanding of how melodies have impacted humanity from ancient to modern times in emotional, cultural, and educational capacities. By combining theoretical frameworks with historical evidence, the study provides a robust foundation for understanding how music can function as both an educational tool and a social instrument.
Results
The analysis yields several important conclusions regarding the role of music in society. Throughout history, music has been a means of communication and emotional expression, whether creating national groups or reinforcing social solidarity. In educational settings, music also supports emotional and social development, thereby promoting the integration of diverse populations (Wong, 2021). Additionally, music acts as a bridge for transcultural communication, providing access to tonal expressions that have historically been excluded from Europeanized concepts of music. The findings indicate that music can serve a non-verbal function in musical behavior and can be methodologically employed to strengthen integrative and adaptive capacities in students, especially migrants within school contexts, who come from varied cultural environments. Through a range of historical cases and theoretical frameworks, this study confirms the enduring importance of music and its capacity to connect and enhance human cultures.
Discussion — the role of music as a positive social factor, music education, and ethics
Musical language stands as a key tool for intercultural communication, playing a major role in integrating people from diverse cultural backgrounds and ethnicities. Music, performed with the body rather than solely thought, serves as an inherently popular forum. It enables individuals to recall sounds linked to life events, triggering a process of identity recovery. As a channel complementary to verbal communication, it is rich in expression and socialization potential, especially for children.
Contemporary musical repertoires enjoy freedoms that were unimaginable under the historical tonal system. Today's auditory acceptance is far more pluralistic than the mono-national approaches of earlier eras. What is needed now is an effort to reconnect technique with music — not by requiring students to spend hours on arpeggios and metronomes, but by focusing on interpretation. Music must return to its role as a functional communication tool. This strategy can accommodate foreign students, especially those from cultures very different from Western traditions. Another effective approach involves improving unfavorable scenarios for child integration through small-group participation.
To document music's positive role in social life, the example of the poet Tyrtaeus is illuminating. With his songs, Tyrtaeus managed to reconcile the Spartans, give them courage, and instill bravery and determination. The ability of music to ensure societal unity is well documented (Bayliss, A. 2017:49). Music education from a humanitarian perspective enables children and all music-loving listeners to develop new types of behavior — not only related to professional world music but also concerning the role of folk music among world peoples, as an essential phenomenon for expressing emotional responses to various individual and social issues.
The key priority of humanist musical education is to help children understand the special world and the society in which they live. This approach does not neglect musical knowledge but takes a measured path into the field of musical aesthetics. The primary goal of aesthetic education is cultivating an individual's sensitivity, guiding them toward aesthetic values so they can enjoy and appreciate beauty wherever they encounter it.
Because of its human role, music has been valued since early antiquity for educating and forming the free human being. Greek civilization is known for this perspective, and the goal of education in ancient Greece considered music equivalent to other exact and humane sciences — such as mathematics, physics, astronomy, and philosophy — particularly for its cause-and-effect relations. Aristotle, one of the first theorists in the history of theoretical musical thought, contributed emotional analyses of the technical foundation supporting composers, such as the modes (Regelski, 1998). He was the first to classify modes emotionally based on their emotional function. The Dorian mode served as the basis for inspiring songs with joyful, productive emotions that directly mobilized people for everyday tasks like grape harvesting and celebrations.
His view of the Phrygian mode, which he classified as supportive for mourning songs, was very different. The combinations of sounds in this mode were so powerful that, according to Aristotle, they could even lead to "suicide" (Harris, 2008).
In antiquity, music had a secular character, but this changed in Roman culture. With the development of Christianity, musical works took on a religious character that persisted until the sixteenth century and the Renaissance (Schullian & Tsouvalis, 2012). Alongside the cultivated religious music of this period, two other practices flourished: the Western Medieval Chant, both Ambrosian and Old Roman, in which popular creators expressed their emotional responses to contemporary realities (Cohen, 2010).
Humanists of the fifteenth century engaged with music and, for the first time, turned toward the culture and theoretical contributions of the ancient Greeks. They embraced Greek ideas about music and experimented with reviving its secular spirit, while also contributing to church music (Hague, 2011). During that century, humanist influence on music manifested through the existence of monody accompanied by instruments, in an effort to imitate ancient drama. This tendency may have negatively affected the spread of polyphony, at least in environments where the humanist element was strong. Within the Church, polyphony was often viewed positively because it was compared to the heavenly choirs of angels. Aligned with classical standards of harmony between music and poetry, there were attempts to perform musical recitations of classical Latin and Greek texts in monody.
Outside the religious context, these developments anticipated the humanism of the Renaissance. Human beings began to be celebrated as perfect figures and as continuous sources of inspiration for all the arts. Artists valued the ideals of the ancient period, which centered on the well-educated, balanced individual in character, action, and thought. Music was part of the process for forming a more perfect version of humanity. Works of art and literature reflected this concept with physical forms of humans that later influenced artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers laid the foundation for many aspects of music, composition, theory, and musical purpose.
Much discussion took place among the philosophers of the time. One consistent idea was that music aimed for professional education; thus, a true musician understood the logic of a composition. There was a strong belief in music's power, rooted in the view that it could influence emotions, which are fundamental to action. Therefore, music was believed capable of influencing how a person behaves. For this reason, much reflection centered on which kinds of music suited people based on their personality and character traits.
The human contribution of representative Baroque composers (seventeenth century) is now widely recognized. Figures such as Vivaldi, Tartini, Corelli, Scarlatti, and undoubtedly Bach with his instrumental works, mainly embraced secular roles, contributing to the flourishing and expansion of instrumental and orchestral music inspired by nature and daily life, most importantly by reaching a broader listenership. Audiences have long been captivated by Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" — an inspiration for life and humanity, a hymn-like apotheosis of nature — even though Vivaldi worked as a priest in his daily activities, and this did not hinder the work's performance in church settings.
Classical music, as a defining term of the Classical period (eighteenth century), is often viewed as an art form embodying humanistic and ethical ideals that inspire moral consciousness in listeners. This view of serious music fulfilling such an aspiration is one of the outcomes of the Enlightenment as it developed in the late eighteenth century. At that time, within aesthetic theory, the artist became an "independent entity" rather than simply a master serving the church, marking a crucial shift in the culture of the nineteenth century. That century became the supportive foundation for the perspective of representative Classical composers, who personified the ethical and spiritual ideals of the Enlightenment in a strong and expressive manner.
It is frequently said that the humanistic values of classical music begin only with Beethoven, but are Mozart's and Haydn's works any less filled with these values? The humanistic element in European art music is not a new development with Beethoven but an essential part of the art form that Beethoven's music brought to a more visible surface. Mozart's departure from the Prince's Court in Salzburg was no accident. As a reformer of Opera Buffa and Seria, Mozart musically and perfectly embodied characters from ordinary life, such as maids alongside the representation of aristocrats. These deeply human ideas of the libretti strongly influenced the evolution of his highly developed, all-encompassing musical forms. Recall "The Marriage of Figaro," "Don Giovanni," and others.
But the composer most profoundly influenced and directly inspired by the revolutionary spirit of the period that brought down the feudal-aristocratic system was undoubtedly Beethoven. The motto of the French bourgeois revolution — "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité" — influenced the evolution of the symphonic genre, with Beethoven introducing vocal quartet soloists and a choir into the Ninth Symphony as a novelty that significantly enhanced the form. Beethoven's connection with the issues of his time was so deep that it directly shaped his individual style. The musical ideas in his work, realized in thematic structures, are closely tied to the revolutionary songs of the era. The Romantic period of the nineteenth century brought fundamental changes to society, the arts, and worldviews. With the famous slogan "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century changed the course of human history, breaking down feudal-medieval structures and opening society to new political systems inspired by Enlightenment thinkers. For the Romantics, the most precious thing in life and art was freedom.
Aligning with each artist's particular vision of freedom, European Romanticism developed along two models. The first model was the melancholic and despairing artist, who either retreated into nature or isolated in solitude. The second model was the energetic artist devoted to a great cause, a lofty ideal, or a historical mission. Works from this second model convey immense human, political, social, and philosophical messages to audiences. Composers of this period, without exception, belong to the second classification.
Their primary contribution was the creation and enrichment of national language in music. More than ever before, music was inspired by and expressed concrete, historical national situations and circumstances. It massively encouraged the spirit of freedom across different peoples and expressed the yearnings of the free human being. This was a period when symphonic music, interacting with literature and its progressive ideas, developed into a wide variety of forms and genres.
In the service of increasing mass communication, program music emerged as another characteristic of Romantic music. It directly supported and massively aided understanding, giving rise to forms such as Franz Liszt's symphonic poem (interaction of music with literature), program symphonies such as Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique," vocal cycles, and a rich variety of instrumental genres closely inspired by folk music — including the mazurka, rhapsody, nocturne, and waltz. Even technical exercises were transformed into concert pieces driven by a specified human motive, such as Chopin's "Revolutionary" étude or his étude on the "Uprising of Warsaw."
Whether as part of court culture, in service to religion, or within the concert life of society's "free market," serious music has always sought to express the highest spiritual and aesthetic aspirations of our civilization. Therefore, music reflects humanistic values within today's cultural field and demonstrates how instrumental and symphonic music, even without the concrete aid of words, can serve as powerfully as other more tangible arts. The most typical example is the main theme of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, initially presented by the orchestra and then strengthened with four soloists and choir, based on Schiller's ode — selected as the anthem of united Europe precisely for the powerful human symbolism it carries within it.
From antiquity onwards, music has proven a permanent and significant presence across diverse cultures and settings. In ancient times it was regarded as sacred; during the Latin and Roman periods it became specifically religious with the rise of Christianity, continuing through the Renaissance (Sheketoff, n.d.). Western medieval forms such as Ambrosian and Old Roman chant provided shared themes through which emerging artists recorded their feelings about contemporary events (Cohen 2010).
Greek scholars of the 15th century, themselves humanists, took up printed works and experimented with music to revive secular thought without abandoning church music (Hague, 2011). Monody, arising from guttural and instrumental monodies, may have fostered polyphony largely because of its connection to ancient drama; this interplay of text conveyed via a single voice proved effective for textual clarity as opposed to the opaque harmonies typical of pre-monodic forms.
During this period, aesthetic behavior aligned with a humanistic ideal that saw the cultured, well-rounded man as the pinnacle — an ideal strengthened by an understanding of music’s role in shaping such individuals. This humanistic ideal, shaped by natural philosophy and emphasizing connections between music, emotions, and movements, found expression in art (for example, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo). Composers including Vivaldi, Tartini, Corelli, Scarlatti, and notably Bach expanded instrumental music by incorporating inspiration from nature and nature metaphors, as well as reflecting everyday life. In doing so they “democratized” its claims about what could be felt through listening (Regelski, 1998).
6. RESULTS
The findings demonstrate the enduring tradition of using music to convey emotions, spread culture, and strengthen communities. During the Baroque period, composers such as Vivaldi and Bach aligned music with humanist values, promoting instrumental and orchestral appreciation beyond strictly religious contexts. Later, in the Classical Age, figures like Mozart and Haydn infused the era with mankind’s touch, focusing on secular thinking, moral conscience, and human values that appealed to the conscious heart — because true enlightenment was meant for everyone.
Music education can serve as a vital connection between cultural narratives and learning experiences, supporting student identity development (Alvarez, 2022).
Beethoven exemplified music’s revolutionary power by weaving the French Revolution’s liberal ideals of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” into his compositions, speaking directly to humanity and societal transformation. Romantic-era composers, driven by this emancipatory mission and a renewed passion for national identity, wove their nations’ folklore into symphonic narratives, consequently renewing music with cultural nationality.