GREEK MUSIC

the music of the ancient Greeks. Scholars have long speculated about the music played in ancient Greece. It is known that ancient Greek philosophers held music in high esteem; its study was deemed essential to a liberal education. Both Aristotle and Plato believed that music permanently affected the human soul, and they even went so far as to categorize the various musical modes in terms of their effects, specifying which would be beneficial to the establishment of good character. The Pythagorean philosophers valued music because it was a manifestation of fundamental mathematical truths; they discovered the fact that certain mathematical relationships coincide with musical intervals. The lack of extensive archaeological evidence, however, prevents a reconstruction of Greek music as it was performed in its day. About 20 unearthed fragments of notated music are extant. They have been deciphered with the aid of contemporary theoretical treatises, and their notational systems provide some knowledge of melodic and rhythmic style. Relics of ancient instruments have also survived, but they are unplayable, so our understanding of how the music sounded rests solely on contemporary writings. These musical fragments show that Greek music was predominantly vocal, although instrumental pieces were sometimes presented. The music was homophonic; i.e., it consisted of single melodic lines. One of the most important compositions was the dithyramb, a poetic text set to music and sung by a chorus in honour of Dionysus. These choruses became more elaborate and more dramatic and eventually evolved into Greek tragic drama. Poetic texts were also sung by individuals, the most striking example being the epic poems of Homer, in which the singer accompanied himself on a lyre. Ancient Greek was a pitched language, so melody had to be an outgrowth of the natural inflections of the spoken language. Greek vowels had long and short values that corresponded to long and short notes in the musical settings. Thus musical rhythms were derived from metric forms, and melodic movement was governed by the natural rise and fall of the text. Ancient Greece appears never to have had a developed instrumental art. Percussion, brass, wind, and string instruments were all played, but the two primary instruments were the aulos, a double-reed pipe that accompanied the chorus in the dithyramb, and the kithara, a hand-held lyre used to accompany solo songs. The exact nature of the accompaniment style is unknown, but since no evidence of counterpoint or harmony appears in contemporary accounts, the accompaniment probably played a version of the melodic line, occasionally adding two-note plucked chords. Aristoxenus, a music theorist and philosopher in the 4th century BC, wrote extensively about the harmonic system used in Greek music. Musical modes were derived from various types of tetrachords, so called because each tetrachord contained four notes. The highest and lowest pitches of all tetrachords were always a perfect fourth apart. The two interior pitches varied; they could be whole tones, half tones, quarter tones, or other microtonal intervals. Tetrachords could be joined to make longer scales either by making the top note of one tetrachord the bottom note of another or by beginning a second tetrachord a whole step up from the first tetrachord. A three-octave scale that would cover the combined vocal range of men and women was constructed by connecting many tetrachords. Though nothing remains of ancient Greek musical practice and few instruments survive, the influence of classical Greek music theory was wide and lasting. In early Christian times the Gnostics used the Greek scale in their incantations, and Byzantium adopted the Greek modes. The Romans acknowledged Greek musical leadership and transmitted Greek theory to Europe through Boethius (c. AD 480-524), and the early Christian church modes drew upon its modes. But Islam is the principal heir to Greek theory through the Persians, Arabs, and Turks, whose writings in turn influenced European music from the 9th century onward. See also church mode; tonos.