The Virtues of Music - Milton Mermikides and Melissa Lane

This is the third lecture from the Gresham Festival of Musical Ideas.
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/series/musical-ideas-2025

This dialogue presents the what and why of Ancient Greek music, and its profound role in philosophy, society and the individual. Education without music was an impossibility in ancient Greece; virtue without music, equally so. One scholar (writing in the late twentieth century) compared the pervasive social presence and impact of the medium of mousikē in Ancient Greece to that of television. But with its participatory motor training and habituation, mousikē, was also a primary mode of acculturation: a way to shape the perceptual attunement and overall outlook of the members of a political community. Engagement with poetry and music pervaded all aspects of Ancient Greek life, and because musical education was the core of Greek education, it was also the core of Greek citizenship and of the virtues. Different musical modes were even thought to impart distinct virtues; for Plato, training in musicality could harmonise the soul, while changes in musical styles and genres could dislocate the entire polity.

This lecture was recorded by Milton Mermikides and Melissa Lane on 29th June 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.

Melissa Lane is Gresham Professor of Rhetoric. Melissa is also the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics, Princeton University and is also Associated Faculty in the Department of Classics and Department of Philosophy. Previously she was Senior University Lecturer at Cambridge University in the Faculty of History and Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. Milton Mermikides  is Gresham Professor of Music.He is Associate Professor in Music at the University of Surrey, Professor of Guitar at the Royal College of Music and Deputy Director of the International Guitar Research Centre.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/virtues-music

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