Music in Antiquity (Chapter 1)

I. The Earliest Music

A. Prehistoric musical cultures
1. limited understanding, lack of written record
B. Historical traces
1. physical remains: instruments, performing spaces
2. visual images of musicians, instruments, performances
3. writings about music and musicians
4. music itself: notation, oral tradition, recordings
C. Prehistoric music-making
1. Stone Age, oldest surviving instruments: bone flutes, 40,000 B.C.E.
2. Paleolithic cave paintings show musical instruments
3. Neolithic era: pottery flutes, rattles, and drums
4. 6th millennium B.C.E.: Turkish wall paintings
a. drummers play for dance and the hunt
5. Bronze Age (4th millennium B.C.E.)
a. metal instruments: bells, jingles, cymbals, rattles, horns
b. plucked string instruments: shown in stone carvings
D. Invention of writing
1. end of prehistoric period; history of music begins
II. Music in Ancient Mesopotamia
A. Mesopotamia: land between Tigris and Euphrates
1. first true cities and civilizations emerge 4th millennium B.C.E.
2. Sumerians developed first known forms of writing
a. cuneiform (wedge-shaped) impressions on tablets
b. adopted by later civilizations: Akkadians, Babylonians
c. many tablets mention music
B. Archeological remains and images
1. pictures: how instruments were held, played, circumstances
2. surviving instruments reveal details for reconstruction
3. 2500 BCE royal tombs at Ur (Sumerian city): lyres and harps found
a. lyres: strings run parallel to resonating soundboard, attached to crossbar supported by 2 arms
b. harp: strings perpendicular to soundboard, supporting neck attached to soundbox
c. bull lyre: distinctly Sumerian
i. soundbox features bull’s head, religious significance
ii. variable number of strings run from bridge on soundbox to crossbar
iii. strings knotted around sticks, change of tension allows for tuning
d. other instruments: lutes, pipes, drums, cymbals, clappers, rattles, bells
C. Uses for music in Mesopotamian cultures
1. best evidence for music from elite classes; rulers, priests
a. resources to make instruments; hire musicians, artists, and scribes
2. similar to today’s uses
a. wedding songs, funeral laments
b. military music, work songs
c. nursery songs, dance music, tavern music
d. entertainment at feasts
e. songs to address the gods, accompany ceremonies and processions
f. epics sung with instrumental accompaniment
D. Written sources
1. ca. 2500 B.C.E. word lists/terms: tuning procedures, performers, techniques, genres

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 2. Enheduanna (fl. ca. 2300 B.C.E.) earliest composer known by name
a. Akkadian high priestess at Ur
b. composed hymns
c. texts survive on cuneiform tablets
3. 1800 B.C.E. Babylonians wrote down music
a. writings describe tuning, intervals, improvisations, techniques
b. genres include love songs, laments, hymns
c. 7-note diatonic scales: parallels in ancient Greek music
d. earliest known musical notation ca. 1400-1250 B.C.E.
i. tablet found at Ugarit, Syrian coast
e. music played from memory or improvised
f. notation used as written record
E. Other Civilizations
1. India and China developed independently from Mesopotamia
2. rich Egyptian musical traditions: artifacts, paintings, hieroglyphs in tombs
3. ancient Israel: scant images and music
III. Music in Ancient Greek Life and Thought
A. Ancient Greece
1. Greek peninsula, islands in the Aegean, much of Asia Minor, southern Italy and Sicily, colonies
ringing the Mediterranean and Black Seas
2. numerous images, few surviving instruments, writings, 40 examples of music
B. Instruments and their uses
1. sources: writings, archeological remains, hundreds of clay pot images
2. aulos: two piped reed instrument
a. finger holes, mouth piece with reed, long tube with beating tongue
b. images suggest unison playing
c. used to worship Dionysus, god of fertility and wine
i. Dionysian festivals in Athens: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripedes
ii. accompanied choruses and other musical portions
3. lyre: 7 strings strummed with a plectrum
a. tortoise shell soundbox with stretched oxhide
b. right hand strummed with plectrum, left hand fingers touched strings
c. associated with Apollo, god of light, prophecy, learning, and the arts, especially music and
poetry
d. learning to play lyre, core element of education in Athens
e. used to accompany dancing, singing, recitation of epic poetry
i. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey
f. provided music for weddings, played for recreation
4. kithara: large lyre
a. used for processions, sacred ceremonies, theater
b. played while standing
5. music learned primarily by ear, played from memory or improvised despite well-developed notation
by 4th century B.C.E.
C. Greek musical thought
1. two kinds of writings on music
a. philosophical doctrines
i. Plato (ca. 429-347 B.C.E.) Republic and Timaues
ii. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) Politics
b. systematic descriptions of the materials of music (music theory)
i. Pythagoras (d. ca. 500 B.C.E.)
ii. Aristides Quintilianus (4th century C.E.)

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 2. music in Greek mythology
a. music inventors and practitioners: gods and demigods
i. Apollo, Hermes, Amphion, and Orpheus
b. music (Greek mousiké) derives from word for Muses
3. music pervaded all Greek life
a. music was an art for enjoyment
b. science related to arithmetic and astronomy
4. music as performing art called melos
a. surviving music is monophonic (single melodic line)
i. pictures show accompaniment with lyre or kithara
ii. possible heterophony or polyphony
b. “perfect melos”: melody, text, and stylized dance
i. conceived as a whole
5. music and poetry were nearly synonymous
a. blend of text, rhythm and harmonia
i. harmonia: unification of parts as orderly whole
ii. encompasses mathematical proportions, philosophical ideas, order of the universe
b. no name for artful speech that did not include music
i. “lyric” poetry sung to the lyre
ii. “tragedy” incorporates noun meaning “the art of singing”
iii. other Greek words for poetry were musical terms, “hymn”
6. Pythagoras: music was inseparable from numbers, key to the universe
a. rhythms ordered by numbers
b. discovered intervals as ratios: octave 2:1, 5th 3:2, 4th 4:3
7. Claudius Ptolemy (fl. 127-48 C.E.): leading astronomer of antiquity, writer on music
a. music connected to astronomy, harmonia
b. mathematical laws and proportions: movements of planets correspond to notes, intervals and
scales
c. Plato “harmony of the spheres”: unheard music, revolutions of the planets
D. Music and ethos
1. music affects ethical character (etho)
a. Pythagoras view: music governed by mathematical laws, operated visible and invisible world
i. harmonia could influence other realms
ii. human soul kept in harmony by numerical relationships
iii. music could penetrate the soul, restore inner harmony
2. Aristotle’s Politics: music affected behavior
a. music that imitated ethos aroused same ethos in listener
b. imitation of ethos through use of scale type, style of melody, rhythms and poetic genres
3. Plato and Aristotle: gymnastics disciplines body, music disciplines the mind
a. Plato’s Republic:
i. two must be balanced, certain music suitable
ii. endorsed Dorian and Phrygian harmoniai, fostered temperance and courage
iii. musical conventions must not be changed
iv. lawlessness in art led to licenses in manners and anarchy in society
b. Aristotle’s Politics:
i. less restrictive than Plato
ii. music for enjoyment and education
iii. negative emotions purged through music and drama
iv. menial and vulgar to play solely for pleasure or others
E. Greek Music Theory
1. earliest theoretical works: Aristoxenus, Harmonic Elements and Rhythmic Elements (ca. 330 B.C.E.)

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 a. pupil of Aristotle
2. important later writers: Cleonides (ca. 2nd or 3rd century C.E.), Ptolemy, Aristides Quintilianus
3. Aristoxenus
a. Rhythmic Elements: musical rhythm closely aligned with poetic rhythm
b. Harmonic Elements: continuous movement and diastematic (intervallic) movement
i. melodies consist of notes, interval, scale
ii. definitions establish basis for all later music theory
4. tetrachord: 4 notes spanning P4th
a. outer notes stationary
b. genera (classes) of tetrachords
i. diatonic genus: oldest and most natural
ii. chromatic: most recent
iii enharmonic: most refined, difficult to hear
5. Greater Perfect System: tetrachords combined to cover larger range
a. 4 tetrachords plus added lowest note, 2-octave span
b. conjunct: shared note
c. disjunt: separated by whole tone
d. middle note called “mese”
e. tetrachords named to indicate place in system
i. “meson” tetrachord 4th below the mese
ii. “hypaton” (first), lowest tetrachord
iii. “diezeugmenon (disjunct), above the mese
iv. “hypabolaion” (of the extremes)
f. not based on absolute pitch
g. Lesser Perfect System: spanning octave plus a 4th
6. species of consonances
a. Cleonides: limited number of ways P4, 5th, and octave divided into tones and semitones in
diatonic genus
b. 7 species of octave; division of octave into species of 4th and 5th
i. Mixolydian, Lydian, Phrygian, Dorian, Hypolydian, Hypophrygian, Hypodorian
ii. octave species parallel Babylonian diatonic tunings
iii. octave species lack principal note
c. Dorian, Phrygian and Lydian: ethnic names
i. music styles of different regions of Greek world
ii. Plato and Aristotle used these names for harmoniai, scale types or melodic styles
iii. prefixes (e.g. Hypo-) multiplied number of names
d. tonos, scale or set of pitches within a specific range
i. 15 different tonoi
ii. transpose system of tones up or down
iii. tonoi associated with character and mood
e. “harmonia,” “tonoi,” “Dorian”: meanings defined by context
F. Ancient Greek Music
1. 45 fragments survive from 5th century B.C.E. to 4th century C.E.
a. Greek texts, when Greece was dominated by Rome
b. most recovered in 20th century
c. notation: notes and duration placed above text
d. 2 fragmentary choruses, plays by Euripides (ca. 485-406 B.C.E.)
2. later pieces more complete
a. 2 complete Delphic hymns to Apollo, 128-127 B.C.E.
b. epigram to Seikolos, epitaph on tombstone, 1st century C.E.
c. 4 hymns by Mesomedes of Crete, 2nd century C.E.

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 d. consistencies, correspondence between theory and practice
3. style example: Epitaph of Seikolos (NAWM 1)
a. diatonic melody, octave range, Phrygian octave species
b. Iastian tonos: system transposed up a whole step
c. text consistent with tonos: moderation
d. melody moderate in ethos: rising 5th and 3rds balanced by falling gestures
4. style example: Euripides’ Orestes (NAWM 2)
a. papyrus from ca. 200 B.C.E.
b. middle portion of 7 lines of text; musical notation above
c. diatonic with chromatic or enharmonic genus
d. instrumental notes interspersed with vocal
e. music reinforces ethos of intense agitation and grief
i. small chromatic or enharmonic intervals
ii. stark changes of register
IV. Music in Ancient Rome
A. Less evidence survives for music of ancient Rome
1. images, some instruments written descriptions
2. no settings of Latin text survive
B. 1st and 2nd centuries of Roman Empire took musical culture from Greece
1. lyric poetry often sung
2. Cicero, Quintillian, other writers: cultivated people should be educated in music
3. Greek architecture, music, and philosophy imported into Rome
4. famous virtuosos, large choruses and orchestras, grandiose musical festivals and competitions
5. emperors supported and cultivated music
a. Nero aspired to personal fame as musician, competed in contests
6. 3rd and 4th centuries economic decline: music on large and expensive scale ceased
C. Instruments
1. tibia (Roman version of aulos)
a. important in religious rites, military music, and theatrical performances
2. tuba: long straight trumpet, derived from Estruscans
a. used in religious, state and military ceremonies
3. cornu and buccina: G-shaped circular horns
D. No trace of direct influence of Roman music
V. The Greek Heritage
A. Characteristics of Greek music continued in later Western music
1. melody shaped by rhythm and meter of words
2. musicians relied on memory and conventions of formulas
B. Aspects of Greek thought influenced later generations
1. music influences human behavior
2. medieval church music and theory used Greek concepts
3. opera composers look to Greek tragedies for models

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