CHAPTER 1 Music in Ancient Greece

Landmarks In Greek History And Culture MAP OF ANCIENT GREECE

Homer: Iliad and Odyssey (c750 B.C.E.) two great epics of early Greece Sappho: ancient Greece’s greatest female lyric poet (7 th century B.C.E.) Pericles: dominated the politics of a city-state of more than 300,000 individuals (Athens) between 469 an d429 B.C.E. Acropolis: a hill overlooking Athens, site of temples; construction began c450 B.C.E. Parthenon: temple to Athena Nike; Bringer of victory; patron goddess of Athens

Music in Greek Society THE PARTHENON

Poetry and Drama: Music in the Greek Theater Aeschylus (c B.C.E.), Sophocles ( B.C.E.), and Euripides ( B.C.E.). Music survives from Euripides, Orestes (see Anthology No. 1)

EURIPIDES, ORESTES, STASIMON CHORUS

SEIKILOS, EPITAPH

Greek Musical Instruments Lyre: a medium-sized instrument usually fitted with seven strings of sheep gut and plucked by a plectrum of metal or bone. Kirthara: a very large lyre, also with seven strings, but with a resonator at the bottom made of of wood rather than a tortoise shell. Aulos: a wind instrument fitted with a round single reed or a flat double reed.

Music in Greek Philosophy: The Ethical Power of Music Pythagoras (c B.C.E.): believed that the essence of the universe could be found in music and number. Review the legend of Pythagoras passing by the smithy’s shop and hearing anvils (or hammers) of different sizes produce the intervals of the octave, fifth, and fourth. Plato ( ): Timeus presents the idea that reality exists only in vaguely perceived background forms; number is the reality that lurks behind the scale and the intervals and indeed all music; the starting point of the Platonic theory of “Music of the Spheres” Aristotle: ( ): Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics present the concept of the ethical quality of music: that music affected the way we behave and that certain kinds of music were uplifting and morally instructive, and other kinds led to deviant behavior.

Point for Discussion Were the attempts of Plato and Aristotle to restrict the kinds of music young people listen to today similar to our own “parental advisor labels” on CDs, or the Talaban’s total ban of secular music?

Greek Music Theory Greeks generated notes of scale by using basic ratios of 2:1, 3:2, 4:3 and 9:8 (3:2-4:3=9:8) Put largest intervals C-C, C-G, C-F in place first and filled remaining notes with 9:8 interval. Intervals E-F and B-C were “left over” half steps. The result: a diatonic scale with five whole tones and two (approximately) half tones within each octave. Tetrachord: Four-note units, the outer notes of which were fixed, the inner notes moveable. Could be strung out in succession to for Greater Perfect System (two octave scale)

Greater Perfect System Greeks had either musical staff, nor note heads, nor clefs; they only spoke in terms of intervallic relationships — of intervals as they were visualized on the Greater Perfect System

Greek Tonoi Greek tonoi placed conceptually on the Greater Perfect System. –Greek genera: diatonic genus, chromatic genus and enharmonic genus –Chromatic genus allow for chromatic inflections; enharmonic genus for microtonal inflection

Review Of Greek Music A system of consonance and dissonance (octaves, fifths, fourths, and multiples were consonances) that would remain unchanged until the fourteenth century A system recognizing octave duplication and dividing each octave into seven pitches (five whole tones and two semitones) The concept of scale patterns, each with its own name, incorporating different intervallic sequences A system of tuning, called Pythagorean, that involved mathematically exact octaves, fifths, and fourths; it remained the only system of tuning discussed by music theorists until the late fifteenth century Important musical terms such as “tetrachord,” “diatonic,” “chromatic,” “enharmonic.”