Ancient Music in Antiquity and Beyond

Collected Essays (2009-2019)

Egert Pöhlmann

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783110664607
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Since the Renaissance, scholars have attempted to reconstruct ancient Greek music mainly on the basis of literary testimonies. Since the late 19th c. evidence from inscriptions and papyri enriched the picture. This book explores the factors that guided such reconstructions, from Aristophanes' comments on music to the influence of Roman music in late antiquity, thereby offering a crucial contribution to our understanding of ancient music's legacy.

1 Pseudo-Plutarch, De Musica

A History of Oral Tradition of Ancient Greek Music

Paper presented at the Seminario Internazionale “Poesia, canto, accompagnamento strumentale nel De Musica attribuito a Plutarco”, svoltosi ad Arcavacata di Rende, dal 26 al 28 Novembre 2009, presso il Dipartimento di Filologia dellʼ Università della Calabria.

The history of Ancient Greek music from Homer to the late 5^th century is musical history without musical notation. Oral transmission nevertheless handed down famous melodies over centuries. Therefore, even late musicologists know many details about succesful melodies of past times, especially the author of De Musica, attributed to Plutarch, together with his sources, as we shall see. The amount of examples of oral tradition in later sources allows us to develop a more complex conception of the transmission of ancient Greek poetry and music between orality and literacy.

1 Orality of musical education

While Greek poetry was handed down to posterity by writing from the 7^th century onwards, ¹ musical education remained oral, as we can demonstrate easily by the famous Berlin school cup (see pl. 1.1) of Duris (490–480 BC): In the middle of the front side the teacher, an older man, is listening to a young boy, who is reciting a poem, the beginning of which we can see on a opened papyrus scroll, which the teacher keeps in his hands. The beginning:

ΜΟΙΣΑ ΜΟΙ / ΑΦΙ ΣΚΑΜΑΝΔΡΟΝ / ΕΥΡΩΝ ΑΡΧΟΜΑΙ / ΑΕΙΝΔΕΝ

shows, despite the orthographic flaws, that the painter is quoting hexameters, a mixing up of two different beginnings of an epic poem. And in the middle of the reverse side of the Duris cup (see pl. 1.2) the teacher, this time a young man with the stilus in the right hand and a diptychon in his lap, is correcting the writing exercises of the pupil, who is standing in front of him. On the wall, we see a closed diptychon and a papyrus scroll, the tools for transmission by writing. On the right edge of the front and reverse sides we see a slave with a walking stick, the παιδαγωγόϛ, who had to accompany the youngsters into school.

As we see, reading and writing poetry were common at the beginning of the 5^th century BC. The way of musical education was quite different: On the left of the front side of the Duris cup we see the teacher, who has just finished playing a piece on the lyre, as his lowered right hand indicates. The pupil in front of him, with both hands on the strings of his lyre, is repeating the piece he just has heard. And on the left of the reverse side of the cup, the teacher is playing on the auloi a piece for the pupil in front of him, who is listening attentively, as he has to learn this piece by heart (προμαϑεῖν). This way of oral teaching of music appears on a host of vase paintings, which show that musical education began already in the family. ²

Eighty years later Aristophanes, in his Clouds, gives a vivid picture of the musical teaching in Athens about 423 BC and before, which can be read as a commentary on the scenes on the Duris cup from the advocate of the old education: ³ “I will describe how the old education was managed ... First of all, it was a rule that not a sound should be heard from a boy, not a grunt; the boys of the neighbourhood had to walk through the streets to the music-masterʼs together and in good order ... Then again he would teach them to learn a song by heart (προμαϑεῖν) ... a song such as «Pallas the terrible, sacker of cities» (Παλλάδα περσέπολιν δεινὰν: Stesichorus or Lamprocles) ⁴ or «A strain that sounds afar» (Τηλέπορόν τι βόαμα <λύραϛ>: Kydias or Kydidas), ⁵ singing it in the mode their fathers handed down (ἐντειναμένουϛ τὴν ἁρμονίαν ἣν οἱ πατέρεϛ παρέδωκαν). And if any of them played the clown or introduced some convolutions such as the moderns use (οἳ νῦν), those annoying twists (καμπή; see below p. 27 f.) in the style of Phrynis, he was thrashed hard and often for disfiguring the music”. It is interesting that Aristophanes here quotes ancient poetry and music and points to its transmission by the forefathers, and to the oral teaching, which required that songs should be learned by heart.

2 Ancient Greek notation

At a date not earlier than the 5^th century BC, aulos-players in Argos had invented a musical notation (see instrumental notation in Appendix 1). In the nucleus of which (nr. 19–52) there are two signs, which belong exclusively to an archaic alphabet of the Argolis (nr. 19 = ypsilon, nr. 43 = beta, 525–425 BC), while the rest can be reconciled with it. ⁶ About 400 BC this notation was adapted to the use of singers by transscribing the system into the modern Ionian alphabet (see vocal notation in Appendix 1). Extended by several steps to the range from low E to g², the system of ancient notation remained until imperial times the prerogative of professional musicians, the ʻtechnitaiʼ, who used the notation for composing and writing down music and for the preservation of their stock pieces. However, the musical notation never became a component of the enkyklios paideia, the artes liberales. Musical education remained oral until imperial times: Although singing from musical scores was familiar to the Roman orator Fabius Quintilianus, he excludes this technique from the education of the future orator: nec moduletur aut musicis notis cantica excipiat (Institutio oratoria 1,12,14).

Papyri with musical notation begin to appear in the 3^th century BC, in Ptolemaic times (see Appendix 2). But most of them belong to imperial times. There are four inscriptions with musical notation, the most famous of which are the ʻDelphic Hymnsʼ to Apollon of 128 BC and 106 BC, pieces by the ʻtechnitaiʼ Athenaios and Limenios. Three Prooimia for two Citharodic Nomoi by Mesomedes, poet and composer at the court of Hadrian, are preserved in medieval manuscripts. Taking all together, we have today 64 fragments of ancient Greek music. ⁷ The first musicologist who uses ancient Greek notation for the illustration of musical facts is Aristides Quintilianus (3. century AD) in the first book of hi...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1 Pseudo-Plutarch, De Musica A History of Oral Tradition of Ancient Greek Music
• 2 Twelve Chordai and the Strobilos of Phrynis in the Chiron of Pherecrates (PCG F 155)
• 3 Pythikos and Polykephalos Nomos Compulsory and Optional Exercise in the Pythian Contest
• 4 Antike Bildersprache im Kirchenlied
• 5 The Oldest Greek Papyrus and Writing Tablets Fifth-Century Documents from the ʻTomb of the Musicianʼ in Attica (By Egert Pöhlmann and Martin L. West)
• 6 Chapters about music on the stage in the Pseudo-Aristotelian Problems
• 7 The tradition of Ancient Greek Music in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
• 8 Ambrosian Hymns: Evidence for Roman Music of Late Antiquity?
• 9 The Monody of the Hoopoe in Aristophanes’ Birds 227–262
• 10 Ἀνωνύμου σύγγραμμα περὶ μουσικῆς (Anonymi Bellermann) An Agglomeration of Five Musical Handbooks
• 11 Aristoxenus of Tarentum, Life and Works
• 12 The Chapter de voce (περὶ φωνῆς) in Ancient Musicology and Rhetorics from Aristoxenus to Dionysius of Halicarnassus
• 13 The Alphabet Comedy of Callias of Athens in Athenaiosʼ Deipnosophistai
• 14 The Regain of Ancient Greek Music and the contribution of Papyrology
• 15 Pausanias Periegesis vol. I, Sources, Structure and Importance for Ancient Greek Music
• E1 Erratum to: Preface