The finest musical mode

According to Plato, music is a useful instrument for education "because more than anything else rhythm and
harmony find their way into the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it." ." Music’s powers, Fitzpatrick explains,
reside in the component parts of song (melos), which plato identifies as words(λόγια),, harmony (or modes) (αρμονία), and
rhythm(ρυθμός). In Book III Plato makes use of the musical modes and the affects which they have on men who listen to them,
play them, or live by them. One of the two modes that Plato deems acceptable and permits entry into the city is the Dorian
mode .The Dorian mode, involves the actions and words of a person who, when at war or in other painful circumstances, faces
these situations bravely and with self-control.The Dorian harmonia will give musical shape to the virtue of courage (andreia) and
the Phrygian harmonia to moderation (sophrosynē).The Dorian mode is said to “imitate” the courageous person in battle,
whereas the Phyrigan mode imitates someone in a peaceful setting being temperate (399a-c).

According to the culture, the Dorian mode comes from the reference of the Dorians (or Doric culture) in northern Greece. In
earlier times Their clash with the Ionians led to the Peloponnesian War. The military state of Sparta esteemed the Dorian culture
and the phrase “ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς”, which the Spartans adopted from the Dorian dialect, became a motto for the high martial
integrity to which the Spartans held their soldiers. These references to a martial attitude gives the Dorian mode a serious,
military and even sometimes reverent feel. Many Gregorian chants that are used in church masses are in the Dorian mode for
the implied reverence to God that the mode represents. With an ordered and secure feeling to the composition and the
background to the model structure as well as the cultural attitude linked to it, Plato deems the Dorian mode as permissible into
the State for guardians to learn and adopt as part of their training and education.

Plato would identify this mode as “pure” and “simple” in his dialogue with Glaucon in the Republic. The simplicity of the Dorian
mode is what Plato finds to be beautiful and temperate. For instance, Plato describes “leaving the mode (implying the Dorian
mode) that would fittingly imitate the utterances and the accents of a brave man who is engaged in warfare or in any enforced
business ”. These attributes are similar to the attributes which the souls of the guardians of the State must embody.

With the order of a military pattern or formation, which a good guardian should know and embody well as a guardian in Plato’s
Republic, the Dorian mode provides a clear example of the pure and beautiful mode of music which has value of being an
extension to knowledge and the good. However,to coclude we should also mention that Like Plato, Aristotle also expresses a
preference for the Dorian mode, “that is the most solemn and sturdiest of modes”.