The application of musical sound as a remedy for physical and mental suffering was a through-line in the European cultural tradition–––offering miraculous and mundane treatments for everything from lovesickness to widespread civil discord. The most influential source of these views was the Pythagorean/Platonic lineage, which forged a connection between the vibrational harmony of the spheres and the proper working of bodies and souls on earth (Tomlinson 1993; Horden 2000; Chiu 2017). However, an alternate tradition of therapy with clear musical applications gained traction with the revival of Stoicisim, a broad intellectual and cultural movement that attracted significant Catholic and Protestant interest in France between the 1580s and the 1630s as a practical remedy for the disordered times. This psychological and cognitive approach to therapy was not dependent upon an enchanted worldview for its efficacy (although Stoicism upheld a belief in the divine), and its interest in music as a remedy went beyond the commonplace medicinal recommendations to enjoy music for health, relaxation, or bodily refreshment. Stoic therapy, in contrast, was built upon a richly detailed philosophy of mind and moral psychology. Although predicated on rationality, Stoic therapeutics remained deeply materialist and cautiously prized the sense impressions and perceptions of the body, a point that opens up fascinating lines of inquiry for an exploration of musical practices influenced by the Stoic tradition. 


Paschal de L'Estocart's polyphonic collections offer early musico-poetic examples of this Stoic resurgence, for the_Quatrains_, the double collection of_Octonaires de la vanité du monde_, and the_Sacrae Cantiones_(all published in 1582), feature settings of Stoic and Neostoic texts. At the most basic level, these settings enlarged interest in Stoicism by circulating their fundamental tenets and therapeutic system to a broader audience through attractive paraphrases set to music. Furthermore, the laudatory poetry and other liminal materials prefacing these prints offer insights into how these polyphonic settings were produced and used as a self-directed mode of therapy for moderating destructive emotions and restablishing harmony in both the individual soul and the state.

In 1770, Mozart received a gift from Count Firmian that would prove to be significant in his compositional life: the nine-volume 1757 Turin edition of the works of Pietro Metastasio. Mozart's fruitful engagement with Metastasio's texts can be seen especially in his settings of the Imperial poet's work in his concert arias spanning his entire life. While numerous scholars have addressed Mozart's setting of Metastasio's librettos including _La clemenza di Tito_, the Metastasian concert arias remain less fully known and understood. I argue that these works, most often intended for performance in private concerts, reveal an aesthetic and philosophical focus quite different from _La clemenza di Tito_, a work designed for public consumption.



In this paper, I will focus on one aspect of this contrast between public and private aesthetics in Mozart's Metastasian settings. Don Neville and Paul Sherrill have argued that, in constructing his poetry, Metastasio was influenced by Cartesian rationalism and that these principles are also expressed in the ways that composers, including Mozart, set these texts. During Mozart's lifetime, however, Enlightenment philosophies of morality were beginning to be applied to new theories of performing and listening to instrumental music, linking musical performances with a morality based on sociability and sympathy or "fellow-feeling." The concert aria-with its non-theatrical venues where sociability and middle-class values were prominent and an emphasis on vocal virtuosity over understanding of the dramatic context-falls into a space between these two systems of thought.



I argue that the morality that pervades Metastasio's libretti is not simply reproduced in the concert aria but rather fused with the Enlightenment morality of sympathy, emphasizing sentiment as well as reason. Examining these Metastasian concert arias as vehicles of moral instruction in the Age of Enlightenment provides new avenues of understanding how Metastasio's works were consumed in contexts outside of the theater.