Catharsis
The purifying effect of tragedy.
What it means
Catharsis designates in the ancient theory of tragedy the effect that experiencing a drama produces in the spectator: a purification or clarification of the feelings through pity and fear. The term comes from Aristotle's Poetics and has been interpreted in many ways — whether a purification from the affects is meant or a purification of the affects has long been disputed.
Musical use
For music the term has become significant in two ways. On the one hand, the question whether and how music changes a person inwardly has belonged to the basic questions of the philosophy of music since antiquity; the ancient doctrine of the effect of the modes on character belongs in this context. On the other hand, the idea became directly practical in the age of the doctrine of the affects: music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries understood itself as the depiction of affects with the aim of moving the listener, and the doctrine of figures provided a repertoire of nameable means for this.
Around 1600 the idea was also a motive for the emergence of opera: the Florentine circles from which it arose invoked the effect of ancient tragedy and sought a form of singing that follows the word and its affect instead of artful polyphony.
Bear in mind that such terms name aesthetic interpretations and no verifiable effects; they explain what an age expected from music.
The term comes from Aristotle's Poetics, who saw tragedy as leading, through pity and fear, to a purification of these affects. How the word is exactly to be understood has been disputed since the Renaissance. In music aesthetics it is transferred to the effect of opera, oratorio, and dramatic instrumental music.
Performance practice
With music that depicts an affect, ask first about the text and the situation: what is meant to be felt here, and by what means is it depicted? Shape these means distinctly but trust them — the affect lies in the music and need not be additionally demonstrated. Precisely pieces of lament act more strongly when they are played plainly.