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The musical culture of ancient Greece is
known more through literary references than through preserved
musical documents. About 20 fragments of music are extant
written in a relatively late Greek notational system, but
references to music performed at various rites and social
occasions abound in the works of ancient Greek authors. Consequently,
most modern discussions of Greek music either speculate about
the sound of the music itself, or deal with the role and nature
of music in that society.
Dance, poetry, rite, and music seem inseparably associated
in the early history of music in ancient Greece. Homer's Iliad
and Odyssey report vintners' songs, dirges, and hymns of praise
to Apollo (paeans). Music was described as an art exerting
great power (ethos) over human beings, and certain musical
styles came to be associated with particular peoples and deities.
The KITHARA, a plucked string instrument, came to be linked
with Apollo, the god of the Sun and reason, while the aulos,
a loud double-reed instrument, came to be identified with
Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstatic revelry. The most important
of mythic musicians in ancient Greek culture was ORPHEUS,
whose music had the power to cause inanimate objects to move
and even influence the forces of Hades.
Among the earliest Greek musicians whose existence and accomplishments
seem to be rooted in reality as well as legend are Terpander
of Lesbos (7th century BC), the founder of lyric kithara performance,
PINDAR of Thebes (6th-5th century BC), whose odes represent
the rise of Greek choral music, and Timotheus of Miletus (5th-4th
century BC), a virtuoso performer on the kithara whose inventions
contributed to his infamy as well as his fame. The musical
and lyrical tradition represented by these personalities reached
its apex in the Athenian drama of the 5th and 4th centuries
BC, a dramatic tradition in which solo and choral singing,
instrumental music, and dance all played essential roles.
Although many names of musicians are recorded in ancient sources,
none played a more important role in the development of Greek
musical thought than the mathematician and philosopher PYTHAGORAS
OF SAMOS (6th-5th century BC). According to legend, Pythagoras,
by divine guidance, discovered the mathematical rationale
of musical consonance from the weights of hammers used by
smiths. He is thus given credit for discovering that the interval
of an octave is rooted in the ratio 2:1, that of the fifth
in 3:2, that of the fourth in 4:3, and that of the whole tone
in 9:8. Followers of Pythagoras applied these ratios to lengths
of a string on an instrument called a canon, or monochord,
and thereby were able to determine mathematically the intonation
of an entire musical system. The Pythagoreans saw these ratios
as governing forces in the cosmos as well as in sounds, and
Plato's Timaeus describes the soul of the world as structured
according to these same musical ratios. For the Pythagoreans,
as well as for Plato, music consequently became a branch of
mathematics as well as an art; this tradition of musical thought
flourished throughout antiquity in such theorists as Nicomachus
of Gerasa (2d century AD) and PTOLEMY (2d century AD) and
was transmitted into the Middle Ages by BOETHIUS (6th century
AD). The mathematics and intonation of the Pythagorean tradition
consequently became a crucial influence in the development
of music in medieval Europe. Followers of the peripatetic
tradition, especially Aristoxenus (4th century BC), found
the Pythagorean ratios too archaic and restrictive and began
a more empirical tradition of ancient musical thought.
Although little of ancient Greek music survives, Greek musical
thought has profoundly affected the manner in which Western
culture has expressed itself in this art.
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