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The Performer as Orator
Summary
Baroque musicians and theorists saw many parallels between the Greek and Roman art of rhetoric (oratory) and music.
According to ancient writers, such as Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian, orators employed rhetorical means to control and direct the emotions of their audiences and so persuade and move them.
It is not surprising to find Marin Mersenne in Harmonie universelle (1636) describing musicians as ‘harmonic orators’.