Music in Ancient Greece Music History I MU 2720 WPI Brent Wetters August 23, 2018 Epitaph of Seikilos ✦ ✦ What is a musical composition? ✦ Where does it come from? ✦ What is it for? What is music history? ✦ What do music historians study? ✦ What don’t they study? Beethoven ✦ Many of the assumptions we make about music history are based on our understanding of (obsession with?) Beethoven ✦ Later composers actively modeled themselves on Beethoven ✦ Musicologists have tended to view music history before Beethoven teleologically: ✦ Everything viewed through the lens of “how did we end up at Beethoven?” Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) Josquin des Prez ✦ Another model could have been (and was for a time) Josqin des Prez (1450– 1521) ✦ During his lifetime, he was regarded as the greatest living composer. ✦ Moreover (and in contrast to Beethoven) he was regarded as having perfected the art of music. ✦ i.e. music as craft The imaginary “Classical” ✦ This class is about the history of one particular type of music: what we colloquially refer to as “classical” music. ✦ ✦ ✦ But what do we mean when we say the this music is “classical”? Where did that word come from? The word refers to ancient Greece ✦ But we know very little about music in ancient Greece ✦ (This in spite of the fact that many of our musical terms come from Greek: “music”, “melody”, “harmony”) Music history textbooks typically begin in the 9th century CE when the first “Gregorian” chants were written down The imaginary “Classical” ✦ So why do we care about about ancient Greece? 1. There were many scholarly and philosophical works written that describe music, just not with enough specificity to know what it sounded like 2. Many of the initial scientific discoveries about the nature of sound and pitch were discovered by Greek philosophers (most attributed to Pythagoras) 3. Composers who come after, in spite of knowing next to nothing about the actual music, are forever looking to a imaginary “idea” of Greece for inspiration and support. • We will encounter many composers who claim to be returning music to it’s Greek origins—to become “classical” What they knew about Greece ✦ By 500 CE, the major Greek philosophical and scientific texts had been read and translated. ✦ Boethius (477-524) largely responsible ✦ The tonal system, while not exactly the same as it would have been in Greece is based on the same mathematical principles ✦ Other texts describe ways in which poetry and tragedy may have been sung ✦ Painting and visual arts give us clues as to the existence and types of musical instruments ✦ Pythagoras How they were tuned is less clear Greek Lyre The Epitaph of Seikilos ✦ ✦ Tablet discovered in 1883 ✦ Thus long after our story concludes ✦ In modern day Turkey ✦ Dated to ca. 200 BCE Inscription shows words annotated with pitches using letters. ✦ ✦ Some disagreement about scale to which it refers Again, says nothing of instrumental accompaniment Ὅσον ζῇς φαίνου hóson zêis, phaínou While you live, shine μηδὲν ὅλως σὺ λυποῦ mēdèn hólōs sù lupoû have no grief at all πρὸς ὀλίγον ἐστὶ τὸ ζῆν pròs olígon estì tò zên life exists only for a short while τὸ τέλος ὁ χρόνος ἀπαιτεῖ. tò télos ho khrónos apaiteî. and Time demands his due. Period Instruments ✦ Stringed instruments largely the same as modern versions ✦ ✦ Or in the case of Stradivarius, Baroque instruments are still used—though often with modern strings and mechanics integrated Wind instruments vary from “similar” to very different ✦ Brass instruments (trumpets) require specialized training to play older version ✦ Woodwind instruments can be played with minimal extra training ✦ Harpsichord, generally played only for Baroque music, but still widely found and practiced ✦ Since the 1980s, there have been many “period” performance groups that play Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical music on period instruments. ✦ But what are the elements that remain that either aren’t played in a “historically informed” way, or that performers still have blind spots, etc?
