Henry Fielding

“ But admitting the objection true, where is its validity, when we consider of what persons the audiences will be composed? for not only the common soldiers, but all inferior officers, are excluded by the price. Indeed, the audience at an opera consists chiefly of fine gentlemen, fine ladies, and their servants, and except a few general officers, whose courage we ought to imagine superior to the power of a languishing air, scarce a person is ever present, who is likely to see a camp, or handle a musket; unless the opera, by being regulated as above, should inspire a martial spirit into them. ”

“ And Pythagoras (to mention no more) is known to have held, that virtue, peace, health, and all other good things, was nothing but harmony. Hence perhaps arose that notion maintained by some of the Greeks, from observing the sympathy between them, that the soul of man was something very like the sound of a fiddle. ”

“ And here I must premise, that this objection proceeds on a tacit admission of what is by no means true, viz.: That the sums expended on an opera subscription would otherwise be employed in the public service of the nation, or at least in private charity, to some of the numberless objects of it.
But this would certainly not be the case; for the person who could think of promoting such a diversion, in the midst of so much calamity, must have neither heart nor head good enough to feel the distresses of a fellow-creature, much less to relieve them ”

“ The great power over the passions, which the ancient philosophers assigned to music, is almost too well known to be mentioned. Socrates learned to sing in his old age. Plato had so high an opinion of music, that he considered the application of it to amusement only, as a high perversion of its institution ”