Oh Noes, I am Decadent

In preparation for the publication of a new web-log (a soon-to-be-announced project I am working on), I've been looking into the decadence of the Roman Empire. As always, primary sources are best. Over at the excellent Ancient History Sourcebook, I happened upon a jeremiad by Ammianus Marcellinus, a visitor to Rome not too long before the city was sacked by the Visigoths. Amid a veritable catalogue of moral decay he mentions the following:

Those few mansions which were once celebrated for the serious cultivation of liberal studies, now are filled with ridiculous amusements of torpid indolence, reechoing with the sound of singing, and the tinkle of flutes and lyres. You find a singer instead of a philosopher; a teacher of silly arts is summoned in place of an orator, the libraries are shut up like tombs, organs played by waterpower are built, and lyres so big that they look like wagons! and flutes, and huge machines suitable for the theater.

As an organist (though not a player of the aforementioned hydraulis), I am not entirely certain what to make of this. I am realistic enough to admit that music cannot replace philosophy (though music probably predates philosophy; that is another discussion). But at the same time, the scholarly study of music is part of the medieval quadrivium, and one of the liberal arts. Perhaps Marcellinus refers to the non-scholarly practice of music, of which there is plenty today. Music, when removed of its context in the pursuit of knowledge, can become nothing more than a "silly art", a "ridiculous amusement". (Observe American Idol, or simply listen to nine out of ten radio stations.) In that case, we are well on our way to following the Romans' descent into decadence.