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Greek Music and its Relation to Modern Times
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
In Greece the art of music was honoured as scarcely inferior to poetry itself, and in lyric and tragic compositions at least the two arts were almost inseparably allied. The religious and athletic assemblies, the Panathenaia, the Olympia, the Pythia, the Karneia, etc., were not complete without a goodly number of musical celebrations, and from quite early times an important musical contest had been held at Delphi in which the greatest singers and instrumentalists took part. At Athens the free-born youth was trained in the essentials of the art, and music was considered so much a part of the national life that innovators were not infrequently charged with aiming at the subversion of the state itself. Greek literature is so full of allusions to, and metaphors drawn from music, that a question of real interest and importance often presents itself to us: how far are we in Europe, who have inherited so much in literature and the plastic arts from the Greeks, also indebted to them for our modern music? Is there, in short, any recognisable chain of descent from Terpander and Timotheos to Beethoven and Wagner?
Strong negatives and affirmatives have been given to this question because of the doubt which exists about the real nature of Greek music itself. Some enquirers believe that ancient Greek music contained the germs of that ecclesiastical system from which modern music has been evolved; others arriving at different conclusions, deny that the music of the golden age of Greece bears any real relation to that of modern times.
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- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1920
References
1 A full account of this theory is given in Mr.Denniston, valuable article: ‘Some Recent Theories of the Greek Modes,’ Classical Quarterly, April, 1913.Google Scholar
2 Pollux, , Onom. iv. 65Google Scholar; and Athen. 625 F.
3 Athen. 624 C (quoted above); Pollux, Onom. iv. 65Google Scholar; Bellermann, , Anon. 28.Google Scholar
4 Schol. on Aristoph. Acharn. 14; Plutarch, De Musica, ch. 16; Callim. in Schol. on Pindar, Ol. xi. 117.
5 SirStyles, Francis Eyles, Philosoph. Trans. 1760, vol. li. p. 755.Google Scholar
6 There is no need or real reason to refer the words 
and 
to pitch at all (cf. H. S. Jones, C.R. 1894), If we agree with Monro that they do refer to pitch we are faced with the above impasse; if on the other hand we give them an ethical meaning, most of Monro's evidence for his theory disappears.
7 Cf. Synesios (apud Vincent, Notices, p. 283): 
8 Macran's translation.
9 Mr. Denniston (Cl. Quart. 1913) quotes three passages which seem to fix all scales to one scheme; but in every one of these cases it can be shown that Pythagorean influences have been at work and that only the Dorian ἁρμονία is in view. The evidence for the modal theory is far too weighty to be upset by three passages for which an easy explanation presents itself (cf. Gevaert, , Les Problèmes Musicaux d'Aristote, p. 167Google Scholar; and Weil, and Reinach, Plutarque: de la Musique, p. 92, n. 226).Google Scholar
10 Cf. Weil, and Reinach, exhaustive notes: Plutarque, de la Musique, p. 119.Google Scholar On the whole of this section, cf. Curtis, J.H.S. xxxiii.
11 Athen. 631 E; and Paus. ix. 12, 5.
12 Athen. 636 E; Paus. iii. 12, 10; Plutarch, De Mus. 1135 D, 1141 D.
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17 Harmonika, ii. 6: 
ii. 7: 
18 Such a view of course involves the use of what is known as the 
or nomenclature by position and not by function. It does not occur definitely before Claudius Ptolemaeus but Aristotle, , Politics, iii. 3, 1276 BGoogle Scholar, seems to imply it. It may even have been the older of the two nomenclatures, cf. Weil, and Reinach, , Plutarque, p. 44, n. 107.Google Scholar
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