ABSTRACT
The relation between ancient Greek music and Greek identity was self-evident to Romantic scholars. This chapter deals with the ideas on ‘Dorian’ music and arts as the purest expression of Hellenism, as they were promoted by one of the most important German philologists, Karl Otfried Muller. Muller was one of the greatest archaeologists and philologists of the first half of the nineteenth century. Muller's theories were influenced by German idealism, especially by Schleiermacher’s philosophy and Friedrich Schlegel’s works. Civilisation is predicated on two ‘facts’ that function as absolute criteria: social activity and individual liberty. The levels of cultural development depend on these two ‘facts’, deeply influencing the progress of human society. Eastern musicians brought the ‘Dorian mode’ into Greece from Asia Minor, even in the Dorian communities in the north of the Peloponnese. That is why the Dorian mode could not have been created by the Dorian race.
