In this sense, music as a mode of thought is able to combine the features of both mathematics and rhetoric in a single form that can be pleasing to the soul. The inability to recognize this leads some to think of music as a type of irrational emotionalism or erotic passion rather than as a disciplined, intellectual, and beautiful mode of thought. This portrayal of music as passionate and irrational comes not only from the political and cultural Left but also from the Right. But this conception of music is nothing more than a form of sentimentalism that romanticizes a non-existence past.
"The social potency of music" ... "flat souls" !!! You sure are talking about the world I live in. Many thanks Lee.