This chapter annotates the locations of the musical notes in the Symposium's speeches, in order to show that the symbolic scheme introduced in Chapter 2 is carried out in a consistent and comprehensive way through the rest of the dialogue. The introductions to each speech summarize the strategies for marking its notes.

Especially in the genre of allegorical or symbolic literature, explications of the details and meanings of symbols are often open to debate, even when there is a strong consensus that an author, such as Dante or Spenser, has adopted a symbolic or allegorical scheme.

Among the fifty or so wholenotes and quarternotes in the Symposium, some two or three are marked with passages whose relation to the genus of “harmony” is not clear (e.g. 6.2). The surprise is that most of the passages, especially at the more consonant or dissonant notes, can rather directly be read as species of harmony or disharmony. h e commentary points out these residual problems, but generally does not attempt to assess the strength of each piece of evidence.

Phaedrus

As mentioned above, the notes between the i rst and third wholenotes are not emphatically marked, and verification of the bare existence of the musical structure of the Symposium should start with the third wholenote and the intensely consonant or dissonant notes that follow.