Music in Ancient Greece

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CHAPTER 1

• Music in Ancient Greece

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Landmarks In Greek History And Culture

• MAP OF ANCIENT GREECE

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• Homer Iliad and Odyssey (c750 B.C.E.) two great
  epics of early Greece
• Sappho ancient Greeces greatest female lyric
  poet (7th century B.C.E.)
• Pericles dominated the politics of a city-state
  of more than 300,000 individuals (Athens) between
  469 an d429 B.C.E.
• Acropolis a hill overlooking Athens, site of
  temples construction began c450 B.C.E.
• Parthenon temple to Athena Nike Bringer of
  victory patron goddess of Athens

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Music in Greek Society

• THE PARTHENON

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Poetry and Drama Music in the Greek Theater

• Aeschylus (c580-480 B.C.E.), Sophocles (490-407
  B.C.E.), and Euripides (485-406 B.C.E.).
• Music survives from Euripides, Orestes (see
  Anthology No. 1)

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EURIPIDES, ORESTES, STASIMON CHORUS
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SEIKILOS, EPITAPH
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Greek Musical Instruments
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• Lyre a medium-sized instrument usually fitted
  with seven strings of sheep gut and plucked by a
  plectrum of metal or bone.
• Kirthara a very large lyre, also with seven
  strings, but with a resonator at the bottom made
  of of wood rather than a tortoise shell.
• Aulos a wind instrument fitted with a round
  single reed or a flat double reed.

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Music in Greek Philosophy The Ethical Power of
Music

• Pythagoras (c580-480 B.C.E.) believed that the
  essence of the universe could be found in music
  and number. Review the legend of Pythagoras
  passing by the smithys shop and hearing anvils
  (or hammers) of different sizes produce the
  intervals of the octave, fifth, and fourth.
• Plato (429-347) Timeus presents the idea that
  reality exists only in vaguely perceived
  background forms number is the reality that
  lurks behind the scale and the intervals and
  indeed all music the starting point of the
  Platonic theory of Music of the Spheres
• Aristotle (384-322) Platos Republic and
  Aristotles Politics present the concept of the
  ethical quality of music that music affected the
  way we behave and that certain kinds of music
  were uplifting and morally instructive, and other
  kinds led to deviant behavior.

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Point for Discussion

• Were the attempts of Plato and Aristotle to
  restrict the kinds of music young people listen
  to today similar to our own parental advisor
  labels on CDs, or the Talabans total ban of
  secular music?

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Greek Music Theory

• Greeks generated notes of scale by using basic
  ratios of 21, 32, 43 and 98 (32-4398)
• Put largest intervals C-C, C-G, C-F in place
  first and filled remaining notes with 98
  interval. Intervals E-F and B-C were left over
  half steps.
• The result a diatonic scale with five whole
  tones and two (approximately) half tones within
  each octave.
• Tetrachord Four-note units, the outer notes of
  which were fixed, the inner notes moveable.
• Could be strung out in succession to for Greater
  Perfect System (two octave scale)

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Greater Perfect System

• Greeks had either musical staff, nor note heads,
  nor clefs they only spoke in terms of
  intervallic relationshipsof intervals as they
  were visualized on the Greater Perfect System

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Greek Tonoi

• Greek tonoi placed conceptually on the Greater
  Perfect System.
• Greek genera diatonic genus, chromatic genus and
  enharmonic genus
• Chromatic genus allow for chromatic inflections
  enharmonic genus for microtonal inflection

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Review Of Greek Music

• A system of consonance and dissonance (octaves,
  fifths, fourths, and multiples were consonances)
  that would remain unchanged until the fourteenth
  century
• A system recognizing octave duplication and
  dividing each octave into seven pitches (five
  whole tones and two semitones)
• The concept of scale patterns, each with its own
  name, incorporating different intervallic
  sequences
• A system of tuning, called Pythagorean, that
  involved mathematically exact octaves, fifths,
  and fourths it remained the only system of
  tuning discussed by music theorists until the
  late fifteenth century
• Important musical terms such as tetrachord,
  diatonic, chromatic, enharmonic.