bring out your devil
I’ve fallen behind on my reading over at the Sur La Lune discussion boards, which means that I missed this:
by Todd E. Sullivan
Associations between the violin and death or the devil reside deep in the modern Western consciousness. Traditional, popular, and classical music cultures have reinforced this viewpoint many times over. The identity of the “Devil as fiddler” has evolved in stages over the past two millennia or longer as numerous religious beliefs, folk legends, and literary tales merged to produce a central myth.
Roots of this myth trace back to ancient Greek religious cults. Instruments were commonly associated with specific deities and their ethical attributes. The reed-pipe aulos, for instance, belonged to the decadent cult of Dionysius (Bacchus in Roman mythology). Aristotle pronounced the aulos “not an instrument that expresses moral character; it is too exciting.” The lyre and kithara were connected with Apollo, the god of music, healing, archery, and the sun. Accordingly, string instruments were thought to possess enormous restorative powers.
This correlation between musical instruments and moral states appealed to early Christians. Medieval society invoked music to rationalize the constant intrusions of warfare, plague, and death. In literature and folk lore, the sound of pipes frequently accompanied Death on his gruesome rounds. During the Middle Ages, string instruments enjoyed quite different affiliations. Ecclesiastical artists commonly selected the soft-toned vielle, rebec, or lira for symbolic representations of goodness and the divine. Saintly figures, angels, and cherubim often held these mellow-sounding instruments in hand. Thus, the ancient Apollonian stereotype was retained for centuries in Western Europe.
