Mousikē provides the most explicit and enduring examples of innovationist discourse in any sphere of Greek cultural activity. The significance and function of that discourse vary, reflecting both the variety of the domain of mousikē and the different ways things can be called ‘new’. The rhetoric of innovation often elides such distinctions, intentionally or otherwise; but the mass of verbal indications of innovationism in Greek musico-poetic texts, combined with the ubiquity and popularity of Greek musical activity, leaves little room for doubt that the idea of the new played a vital role.

Testimony to the place of novelty in music begins with the songs of Homer. In the first book of the Odyssey, Homer depicts the bard Phemios entertaining suitors in Odysseus’ palace with a song about the return of the heroes from Troy (nostos Akhaiōn). The song distresses Penelope, who bursts into tears and asks the minstrel to change his tune:

1. Phemios, you know many other pieces to enchant mortals,

2. deeds of men and gods that bards celebrate (kleiousi) in song.

3. Sing one of those as you sit among these men, and let them

4. drink their wine in peace. But stop singing this

5. distressing song – it always breaks my heart,

6. since I, more than any, am constantly racked by grief.

7. I pine for my dear husband and am constantly reminded

8. of him, whose fame (kleos) is wide throughout Hellas and in the heart of Argos.

Telemakhos intervenes:

Telemakhos’ forthright statement makes him ‘the poet's spokesman in his plea for artistic freedom and his emphasis on the importance of poetic novelty’.