Music coming from the different parts of the world is immediately identifiable as to its origin. Reels, Ragas, Rock and Roll, Rachmaninov—who could confuse these?

The British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams claimed, "The art of music above all the other arts is the expression of the soul of a nation"

Chicken, egg

But does the culture at the music's origin give its character to the music, or does the music give its character to the culture? This is a philosophical question, and as with most philosophical questions our primary reference point is the writings of Plato.

Plato's recommendations for education in his ideal Republic are very specific on the influence of music. He is however hopelessly self-contradictory.

To start with, we see immediately a problem that was to be common among philosophers through the centuries. Plato greatly admired Pythagoras, the philosopher who first showed in detail the mathematical relationships expressed in harmony. Plato may have been an able mathematician, but he baulked (like many a philosopher after him) at working out the details for himself. Thus we have, in his most influential work The Republic, the following abject disclaimer from his mouthpiece, Plato's Socrates, discussing which modes and which rhythms to permit in the ideal State:

Socrates: I am not an expert in the modes, I said; but leave me one which will fittingly represent the tones and accents of a brave man in warlike action [etc] ...
Glaucon: ... but what kind of life each rhythm is suited to express, I cannot say.

Socrates: Well, we shall consult Damon [a famous musician] on this question, which metres are expressive of meanness, insolence, frenzy, and other such evils, and which rhythms we must retain to express their opposites.

This passage has bedevilled musical theory ever since. Plato favoured the Dorian and Phrygian modes (among those in use in the Greek world), as they (seemingly) expressed the Dorian and Phrygian ethnic characteristics: warlike manliness, steadfast endurance, and the like, rather than the effeminacy and luxury that Plato despised in the Ionians and Lydians.

It is no use consulting the medieval Church modes to evaluate the expressive qualities of these modes; the church modes were given Greek names, but did not resemble the ancient Greek modes.

The upshot of Plato's policy of promoting some modes and banning others is a contradiction: he proposes to mould people's character by presenting the modes that result from the desired character. The contradiction escaped his pupils' attention—no doubt it was taken for granted that exposure to a nation's music would be the same as exposure to their moral behaviour. Still, it remains a classic case of cart before horse.

In recent centuries, certain styles of music, which we would call genres rather than modes, have been similarly discouraged or outlawed in paternalistic states, notably jazz which was vehemently outlawed in 1930s Ireland.

The French court in the 1750s went through a Guerre des Bouffons when the queen favoured Italian opera while the King patronised French opera. The Italian camp won out, and from then on all European music had been dominated by Italian influence¹.

In sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Europe dance suites had been spiced with national characters, with universal Allemandes and occasional Branles d'Écosse, Hongroises and so on. These often verged on fancy-dress, rather than serious characterisation, but in the nineteenth century a practice began of writing music intended to express nationality without caricaturing it. However, the most prominent examples of national characteristics in international music are often written by nationals of another country: the Spanish flavour of Bizet's Carmen inspired many Spanish composers to begin ransacking their folk idioms.

Despite the Allemande being the meatiest movement, obligatory in dance suites, German composers in particular became