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Modes and Roads: Factors of Change and Continuity in Greek Musical Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Roderick Beaton
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Extract

About A.D. 400 the historian Olympiodorus, surveying the contemporary state of culture with a perhaps conventional sigh of nostalgia for a vanished silver age, wrote that “Of the other liberal arts, such as arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, there are a few remains left to our time. But of music even its fame is not known to us. We have books on musical theory but we do not understand them”. Much the same had been said by Aristoxenus some seven centuries previously, which suggests that as far as the ancient world, at least, is concerned, any attempt at reconstructing the music of Greece can never be more than hypothetical and subjective. This does not mean that valuable information cannot be sifted from ancient texts and archaeological evidence, and the number of studies cited over a 25-year period by Winnington-Ingram testifies to the continuing interest of the subject despite its intrinsic limitations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 75 , November 1980 , pp. 1 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1980

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References

1 Düring, I.. “Greek music: its fundamental features and its significance”. Journal of World History 3 (1956), 324.Google Scholar

2 De Compositione Verborum 11, 19.

3 “Ancient Greek music 1932–1957”. Lustrum 3 (1958), 5–57.

4 See the definition of folk music adopted by the International Folk Music Council Journal of the I.F. M. C. 7 (1955), 23.Google Scholar

5 It is only partly true that in a classical or ‘art’ music tradition formal structure predominates, while folk music is largely governed by informal conventions of melodic structure; since in a classical tradition the formalised ‘theory’ which is taught as part of a practical musical training may have grown out of a response to practical demands. It must also be remembered that the distinction between ‘classical’ and ‘folk’ music is rarely clearcut outside western Europe.

6 The most comprehensive and rationally argued account of ancient Greek music is by Henderson, Isobel in the New Oxford History of Music, Vol. I, ed. Wellesz, , 1958, 336–403.Google Scholar See also Winnington-Ingram, R.P., Mode in ancient Greek music (Cambridge, 1936)Google Scholar and op. cit. The music of ancient Greece: an encyclopaedia by Solon Michaelides (London, 1978) is knowledgeable and up-to-date, although largely avoiding critical discussion and controversy.

7 See for example Farmer, H. G., “The music of ancient Mesopotamia”, in the New Oxford History of Music Vol. I, 250–2.Google Scholar

8 During, op. cit., 308.

9 These illustrations are taken from Henderson, op. cit., 344. See also Michaelides. 65, 100.

10 A comparable procedure in the development of ‘primitive’ music is outlined by Marius Schneider in the New Oxford History of Music, Vol. I, 14.

11 See Henderson, op. cit., 364–6.

12 Farmer, H.G., “The music of Islam”, in the New Oxford History of Music, Vol. I, 442.Google Scholar

13 Cameron, A., Porphyrius the charioteer (Oxford, 1973), 33–4Google Scholar and Plate 19; cf. Wellesz, Egon, Byzantine music and hymnography (2nd ed., Oxford, 1961), 105–9.Google Scholar

14 J. Ebersolt, La miniature byzantine, Plate 5, reproduced in Karakasis, S., Ἐλληνιχὰ μοσικὰ ὄ∂γανα (Athens, 1970), 42.Google Scholar

15 The inference is made by Karakasis (43·4) who quotes the line, (ATH 1023).

16 Oxyrrynchus Papyri, Vol. XV, No. 1786. See Wellesz, op. cit., 152–6.

17 Wellesz, 44.

18 Farmer, “The music of ancient Mesopotamia”, 254.

19 Wellesz, op. cit., 71.

20 ibid., 62–3.

21 Farmer, “The music of Islam”, 427–438; 456–464.

22 Farmer, , “Greek theorists of music in Arabic translation”, his 13 (1930), 325–337.Google Scholar

23 Farmer, “The music of Islam”, 444–5.

24 Newett, M.M., Canon Pietro Casola's pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the year 1494 (Manchester, 1907), 200.Google Scholar

25 Tillyard, H.J.W., Handbook of the Middle Byzantine notation (Copenhagen, 1935), 30–6.Google Scholar

26 Tillyard, , “The modes in Byzantine music”. BSA xx (1916–1918), 140Google Scholar; “The acclamation of emperors in Byzantine ritual”. BSA xviii (1911–12), 244.

27 Handbook 16; BSA xxii, 147.

28 Chrysanthos of Madytos, Trieste, 1832, reprinted Athens, 1911.

29 My information on the theoretical side of Turkish makamlar is derived from two twentieth century music manuals — Doktor Suphi, Nazari ve ameli Türk musikisi (Theory and practice of Turkish music), Istanbul, 1933 and 1935; and Zeki Yilmaz, Türk musikisi dersleri (Lessons in Turkish music). Istanbul, 1973.

Turkish tonality is based theoretically upon Pythagorean ratios as realised by the Arabs (see Farmer, “The music of Islam”, 456–464): the interval bakiye (four fifty-thirds of the octave) is given by Suphi as the ratio 243 i.e. the Pythagorean leimma. and the word was first used (Arabic baqiyya) by Al-Kindi in the 9th century to describe exactly this interval. The minimum interval of one fifty-third, fazla (although the word translates the Greek leimma) is also called koma (Pythagorean komma). The büyük (large) mücennep is equal to a whole tone less one koma, while the küçük (small) mücennep is equal to a whole tone less one bakiye, or leimma. In strict ‘harmonic’ terms the system of fractions is very slightly out as the true komma (24 cents) is very slightly greater than the fraction one fifty-third of the octave. The audible difference however is not appreciable.

30 Tillyard, , BSA xxii, 147–8.Google Scholar

31 Markos Dragoumis has drawn attention to the substantial number of melodies which have survived in recognisable form despite the accretion of melismatic material and tonal changes (“The survival of Byzantine chant in the monophonic music of the modern Greek Church”, in Studies in eastern chant, ed. Velimirović, M. (London, 1966), 9–36)Google Scholar, A particularly interesting example shows how the unadorned melody of a 15th-century sticheron has been preserved in the structure of an elaborate melismatic setting of the 19th century, despite a complete change in overall tonality (28–30, Ex. 25). He also points out that the note-series of several modern modes in their diatonic form, as well as their cadential notes, are unchanged from Byzantine times.

32 Academy of Athens, (Athens, 1968) See especially the second part of the introduction, by Prof. S. Peristeris (xv–xxxv).

33 See Yilmaz, op. cit., 79.

34 ibid., 58.

35 On the melodic structure of the makam see Tourna, H. H., “The maqam phenomenon: an improvisation technique in the music of the Middle East”. Ethnomusicology 15 (1971), 38–48.Google Scholar Tourna concludes that the dominant modes and their grouping in a melody or improvisation was more important for defining the māqām than the precise intervals involved. indeed as another American musicologist discovered, the intervals actually played in the Arabic maqām are not at all precise (Spector, J., “Classical Ūd music in Egypt with special reference to maqāmat”. Ethnomusicology xiv (1970), 243–257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar) For comparable features of the Byzantine echos see Wellesz, Byzantine music and hymnography, 71 quoted above, and 303–9; 481–427.

36 The Byzantine example, first transcribed by Tillyard (BSA xviii), is given here after Wellesz's transcription (op. cit., 115). The Greek song has been transcribed from the record compiled by Domna Samiou (EMIAL, Athens, No. SCXG 115, published 1973).

37

38 Henderson, op. cit., 370.