In Renaissance and Baroque times

music was created as the mirror of a text, expressing emotions everyone recognised, in ways which allowed the listener to be transported from one emotional state to another, experiencing both healing and an uplifting artistic experience.

The public speaker used a meaningful rhetoric to transport the listener from one affectus, mood, to another, pausing artistically to emphasise each of the figures of speech, the specially chosen word, the elegant phrase.

Speaking was the model for singing, rhetorical singing in its turn was the model for playing an instrument: the mark of a good player was that the listener could understand his words and meaning.