Seeing the importance Plato and Aristotle accorded to music in their political treatises, one may wonder why the subject does not enjoy a similar prominence in the political theory of Rousseau, who, of all modern political writers, was arguably the better equipped to deal with it in a comparably grand manner.

Several answers seem to suggest themselves. Rousseau’s political opus magnum, the Institutions politiques, remained unwritten except for the sketchy extract presented as the Social Contract. Much of the relevant material found eventually its place in Emile, but there the task is to form rather a man than a citizen. Also, the severe criticism of the refinement of arts in the first Discourse seems to preclude a moral justification for what we call art music in the context of the rustic virtues demanded by Rousseau’s ideal communities.

Can art music be allowed into such political communities without corrupting them? To answer this, we must break two spells usually associated with Rousseau social views : a utilitarian perspective that conceives music just as fuel for civic and religious festivities, and an egalitarianism that brings under suspicion those who show a more discriminating taste than the common people. Émile ascends from Robinson to the highest refinements of poetry and drama. Could there be a similar progress for societies, or, if this diachronic movement proves impossible, could there be a synchronic differentiation of these particular sensibilities that is not an occasion for contempt and vanity but a source of mutual enrichment of men?

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