music in ancient greece and rome

309 Pages·2002·6.09 MB·English

MUSIC IN ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME

MUSIC IN ANCIENT
GREECE AND ROME

John G.Landels

London and New York
First published 1999
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Reprinted 2000
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.
© 1999 John G.Landels
The right of John G.Landels to be identified as the Author of
this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Landels, John G.(John Gray), 1926–
Music in ancient Greece and Rome/John G.Landels.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Music, Greek and Roman-History and criticism. I. Title.
ML169.L24 1999
780’938–dc21 98–3051
CIP
MN r98

ISBN 0-415-16776-0 (Print Edition)
ISBN 0-203-04284-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-21690-3 (Glassbook Format)
CONTENTS

List of figures vi
Preface ix
1 Music in Greek life, poetry and drama 1
2(a) The aulos 24
2(b) Kithara and lyre 47
2(c) Other instruments 69
3 Scales, intervals and tuning 86
4 Music, words and rhythm 110
5 Music and acoustical science 130
6 Music and myth 148
7 The years between—Alexandria and southern Italy 163
8 The Roman musical experience 172
9 Notation and pitch 206
10 Some surviving scores 218
Appendix 1 Technical analysis of Greek intervals 264
Appendix 2 The construction of the water-organ (hydraulis) 267
Appendix 3 The Brauron aulos 271
Notes and suggested reading 276
Index 292

v
FIGURES

1.1 Kithara 2
1.2 Aulos 2
1.3 Lyre 2
1.4 Aulos-player with discus-thrower and boxer 6
1.5 Aulos-players practising their arts 7
1.6 Soldiers on the march 9
1.7 Rhapsode 10
1.8 Sappho and Alkaios 11
1.9 Animal choros 20
1.10 Four figures from the Pronomos Vase 22
2a.1a Aulos 25
2a.1b Flute 25
2a.2 Aulos not-so-solemn 26
2a.3 ‘Exploded’ diagram of aulos 27
2a.4a Aulos carrying-case ‘de luxe’ 27
2a.4b Aulos-player with spare pipes in readiness 27
2a.5 Reed seen from above 28
2a.6 Reed (side view) 28
2a.7 Aulos pipes held wide apart 30
2a.8 Aulos-player wearing phorbeia 31
2a.9 Two types of bulb (holmos) 32
2a.10 Dog-fish egg-case 33
2a.11 Fingerholes on early aulos 35
2a.12 Key mechanism of aulos 37
2a.13 ‘Remote-control’ key on aulos, seen from above and below 37
2a.14 Aulos-player’s hands not in line 44
2a.15 Two pipes playing with articulated drone 45
2b.1 Round-based kithara, seventh century BC 47
2b.2 Round-based kithara, fifth century BC 49
2b.3 Round-based kithara with ‘cross-fret’ 49
2b.4 Flat-based kithara 50
2b.5 Support sling on kithara 56
vi
FIGURES
2b.6 Lyre (front view) 62
2b.7 Tortoiseshell body of lyre 62
2b.8 Shape of lyre sounding-board 63
2b.9 Seated lyre-players (teacher and pupil) 65
2b.10 Barbitos 66
2b.11 ‘Thamyris’ or ‘Thracian’ kitharas 67
2c.1 Syrinx (Greek form) 70
2c.2 ‘Nude Youth Fluting’ 72
2c.3 Type of harp (exact name uncertain) 74
2c.4 Type of harp—trigonon 75
2c.5 Horizontal angular harp 75
2c.6 ‘Arched’ or ‘bow’ harp 76
2c.7 ‘Square’ lute 77
2c.8 ‘Pear-shaped’ lute 78
2c.9 Salpinx 79
2c.10 Harmonic series of notes playable on a salpinx 80
2c.11 Tympanon (played normally) 82
2c.12 Tympanon (reversed) 82
2c.13 Krotala 83
2c.14 Psithyra or ‘Apulian sistrum’ 84
2c.15 Mode of vibration of xylophone element
(movement greatly exaggerated) 85
3.1 Eratocles’ ‘circle’ 108
4.1 Pitch-accentuation of Greek words 112
4.2 Correspondence between pitch-accents and musical setting 113
4.3 Dactylo-epitrite in musical notation 116
4.4 Normal Ionic 120
4.5 ‘Anaclastic’ Ionic 120
5.1 Pythagoras’ discovery 131
5.2 Monochord, side and plan view 133
5.3 ‘Multichord Measurer with Helikon’ 136
5.4 Air compressed by impacts 140
5.5 Harmony from synchronous impacts 144
5.6 Euclid’s ‘graph’ representing intervals 147
7.1 ‘Flue’ organ pipe 167
7.2 ‘Italiote’ kithara 169
8.1 Etruscan aulos 174
8.2 Etruscan lyre 175
8.3 Etruscan duet 176
vii
FIGURES
8.4 Lituus 177
8.5 Bucina or cornu 179
8.6 Early Roman funeral 180
8.7 Etruscan transverse flute 181
8.8 Sound-waves deflected by an obstacle 191
8.9 Acoustics of theatre with raked seats 192
8.10 Set of resonators for smaller theatres 193
8.11 Complete set of resonators for larger theatres 194
8.12 Achilles being taught to play the lyre 197
8.13 Hornpipe or ‘Phrygian’ tibia 198
8.14 The ‘super-complete’ or bass aulos/tibia 199
8.15 Organist and horn-player in the amphitheatre 203
9.1 Instrumental notation, original octave 209
9.2 Full range of instrumental notes for aulos 211
9.3 Letters of the Greek alphabet used for the vocal notation 211
9.4 Notation system with vocal symbols added to the
instrumental 212
9.5 Final extension of the notation system 213
9.6 Notation for the two-octave system in the Lydian key 216
10.1 Scores as written by Athenaios and Limenios 225
10.2 Athenaios’ paian, Section 1 229
10.3 Athenaios’ paian, Section 2 231
10.4 Athenaios’ paian, Section 3 233
10.5 Limenios’ paian, Section 1 237
10.6 Limenios’ paian, Section 2 239
10.7 Limenios’ paian, Section 3 241
10.8 Limenios’ paian, Section 4 244
10.9 Limenios’ prosodion 246
10.10 The Orestes fragment 251
10.11 Seikilos’ ‘epitaph’ 253
10.12 Invocation to a Muse 254
10.13 Invocation to Kalliope 255
10.14 Hymn to the Sun 256
10.15 Hymn to Nemesis 259
10.16 Studies for beginners 261
10.17 An early Christian hymn 263
Appendix 2.1 Sectional diagram of the hydraulis 267
Appendix 2.2 Section through the key-mechanism 269
Appendix 3.1 The Phrygian harmonia played on the Brauron
aulos 275
viii
PREFACE

This book is not intended to be a definitive textbook on the music of the
ancient Greeks and Romans; it has a more modest objective—to provide
an introduction to the study of an interesting (at times baffling) subject,
aimed at the student of Classical civilization, the student of the history of
music, and at the general reader with an interest in either or both. It may
perhaps be helpful to explain a number of policy decisions which have
governed the layout and content.
First, this book concentrates very closely on the sonic and practical
aspects of music in the ancient civilizations—the instruments and how
they were played, and the sounds, notes and rhythms, in so far as we
can re-create them. (To this end, I have experimented in Chapter 4
with English translations which reproduce the rhythms of the Greek
words; this is a difficult exercise, and if the results have a certain
flavour of William McGonagall, I must ask the reader’s indulgence.) It
examines the notation the ancients used, and the very small number of
musical scores which have survived. I am also very concerned with the
role of music in the performance of drama, and in other poetical
genres which we do not immediately associate with music. On the
intellectual side, the Greek theories about sound, pitch and harmony
are treated in some detail, because they yield a lot of information on
intonations, scale structures and the sound qualities of various
instruments. But on the moral and aesthetic side, the Greek and
Roman attitudes towards music, and their suppositions about its
possible moral influence, and its role in education and the formation
of character, have been copiously discussed by many authors; I feel
that, to be honest, I have little to add, and there seems little point in
going over such well-trodden ground.
Second, there is the question of the geographical range and the
timespan. The great majority of works on Greek music tend to ignore the
Roman inheritance of this important tradition, or to pass it over in a few
disparaging sentences. It is true, as will be made clear in Chapter 8, that
music was of much less importance to the Romans than it had for the
Greeks; but that does not mean that the Romans, the ancestors of the
ix