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Greek Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

J. Curtis
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Extract

The general conviction that the true nature of ancient Greek music is practically incomprehensible in modern times arises from many causes, of which the most potent are:—

1. That hitherto all explanations have been based on the extant formal treatises, which deal either with the decadent elaborations of solo cithara-playing, or the purely theoretical calculations of the self-styled Pythagorean school, which latter professedly despised the actual performance of music.

2. The attempts to elucidate the subject make no allowance for the fact that the extant specimens of noted music extend over a period of at least eight centuries, and no one explanation is likely to fit either the whole of these or the casual references to music to be found in general Greek literature.

3. Thanks mainly to Aristoxenus, the modern mind has become so permeated by the quarter-tone theory of the enharmonic genus, that even so simple a record as the celebrated Euripides fragment has been generally interpreted as involving this minute interval. The arguments against this theory, at least as regards vocal music, are weighty and almost conclusive; but their full development requires more space than is available here.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 33 , November 1913 , pp. 35 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1913

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References

1 Greek scales are built up of two groups of four notes, called tetrachords, contained within the limits of a Fourth. When the upper tetrachord and the lower have one note in common the system is called Conjunct (synemmenon), and the scale consists of seven notes only; if the upper tetrachord is separated from the lower by the interval of a tone, the system is called Disjunct (diezeugmenon) and the scale comprises an octave.

2 Our modern justly intoned scale is represented by the vibration numbers and the fifth from D to A is represented by the ratio which differs from the true ratio by a ‘Comma’

3 It is not intended to affirm that this had not been done before; but we have no record of it direct or indirect.

4 As a matter of fact, 1 and 4 were φθογγοὶ ἑστῶτες and were not modified.

5 fl. 540–510 B.C.

6 i. 7.

7 Clouds, 961 el seq.

8 Pol. viii. 7.

9 It may be necessary to explain that each line represents the signs for the white notes on a piano in ascending order from A to the double octave above it.

10 i. 7.

11 See Gilbert, Murray, 's Rise of the Greek Epic, p. 40Google Scholar.

12 It would be idle to deny that such steps were sometimes used, and much written about; but they were vagaries of the solo kitharist and the theorist.

13 De Musica, 38, 39.