Thus certain sorts of music would educate boys into living highly ethical lives while other sorts could educate them into baseness. Boys should be allowed to hear music only in the Dorian and Phrygian modes. Plato s ideal state was never established in antiquity. But his musical ideas weren t forgotten. It was the king s hope that proper music making would restore order to his land, ending the bloodshed between Catholic and Protestant, or, if not ending it, at least making the Protestants take their humiliations a little more quietly.
Problem is, it didn t work.
French Protestants and Catholics did not lay down their arms and embrace each other upon hearing the strain of fifes playing music in the Dorian mode. Plato s educational theories on this point at least are sheer nonsense. The idea that requiring boys to listen to music in a particular mode will make them act with courage is perhaps the stupidest notion a great mind has ever come up with. Play whatever music you like for them boys will be boys. And Pythagoras was wrong.