Since Horace wittingly assumed the heritage of Aeolic lyric poetry, we may question
ourselves whether the importance of music and its explicit link with the poetic word in his lyrics are simply a literary convention or the evidence of a performative need and an even deeper connection between word and music. Most likely there is no answer to this question: however, we may detect traces of a deeply rooted sensitivity of the poet towards the musical (and, more generally, sonorous) world. We may find an important declaration when he talks about tragical writing in the Letter to the Pisones: the Ars Poetica, a fundamental text for Western culture, talks explicitly of the marriage of word and music, with a brief organological and (we may say) sociological excursus. The question of the audience and its reception is substantial: music and poetry, united under the modus, become the fundamental parts of a desired proposal of a literary as well as civic education. [p. 41]