ABSTRACT
The connection between music and violence is a powerful and transcultural source of mythic and historical narratives. It is the potentially destructive power of music that underpins Homer's account of Ulysses and the sirens whose song drew sailors to their death, and whose connection with danger would be commemorated in the name given to a sound alarm invented in the nineteenth century. Plato and Cassiodorus believed that certain modes could induce mental disturbances, and the early Christian church believed that pagan residues in music could be exploited by the Devil to produce depravity, and that witches used music to carry out their evil work. In the sixteenth century reports of hostility were found to the intrusiveness of travelling minstrelsy in the streets of one of Europe's most rapidly developing cities, London, and in particular, complaints about repetitiveness: 'the too speedy return of one manner of tune, doth too much annoy'.
