Antiquity

1. Antiquity Part 2 4th Six Weeks – Phase 1

2. From written accounts and from the archaeological record—especially illustrations on pottery—scholars have been able to identify a wide range of musical instruments cultivated in ancient Greece. Instruments of Ancient Greece

3. The most important stringed instruments were the many types of lyres, each with its own characteristic sound and symbolic significance. A lyre consisted of a sound box from which curved arms extended, joined by a crossbar. Strings, attached between the crossbar and the sound box, were often played with a plectrum (a “pick”). Lyres were used as solo instruments or to accompany voices. Instruments of Ancient Greece Cont.

4. Aulos

5. Percussion instruments included drums of many kinds, as well as the krotala (hollowed-out blocks of wood played in the manner of castanets) and kumbala (finger cymbals). Instruments of Ancient Greece – Percussion Instruments

6. Between the 2nd century B.C.E. and the early 1st century C.E., the Greek homeland and the Hellenistic kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean succumbed to the armies of Rome. By 117 C.E., when it reached its greatest extent, the Roman empire controlled the entire Mediterranean world and western Europe into Britain. For some 200 years, beginning with the reign of Augustus (27 B.C.E.—14 C.E.), Roman dominion brought stability and prosperity to this region. Music in the Roman Empire

7. Even before they conquered Greece, the Romans had absorbed many aspects of Greek culture, including its music. No Roman music has survived in notated form, yet we know from written accounts that music played an important role in many aspects of Roman life, including theater and civic ritual. Every religious cult had its own particular repertory of music and instruments. The poet Lucretius (99-55 B.C.E.) described the procession in honor of the goddess Cybele as accompanied by the sound of “tightly stretched drums” that “thunder out as they are struck by the hands of her attendants. Curved cymbals clash, and horns threaten with their harsh wailing. And the hollow flute stirs the heart with Phrygian Tune.” Music in the Roman Empire Cont.

8. Beginning in the late 3rd century C.E., the Roman Empire entered a long period of economic decline. Pressured by Germanic invaders on its borders and stagnating economically, it fragmented into two major regions, eastern and western. During this time, Christianity rose to dominance within the empire, ultimately displacing Greek and Roman pantheon to become the state religion. In 410, the Visigoths sacked Rome, and in 476, with the overthrow of its last emperor, the Western Roman Empire all but vanished. The Greek-speaking Eastern, or Byzantine, Empire would endure the fall of its capital Constantinople (modern Istanbul), to the Turks in 1453. The Musical Legacies of Antiquity

9. By the 5th century C.E., the music of antiquity and the oral tradition that accompanied it had also all but vanished. The theoretical writings of antiquity about music, however, was preserved through Roman poets and authors. Basic elements of Greek and Roman music theory was transmitted by later authors to the medieval era. The Musical Legacies of Antiquity Cont.

10. Thus, although the music of antiquity was essentially lost to the medieval era, the attitudes of the ancient Greeks and Romans toward music have exerted an unbroken influence on Western thinking about the art down to the present day. Many of these attitudes and beliefs found their expression in myth. Other aspects of ancient perspectives toward music can be gleaned from philosophy, drama, poetry, and through writings concerned directly with music itself. And so…

11. The Romans made significant advances over the Greeks in instrument building. Brass instruments like the tuba and cornu (horn) featured detachable mouthpieces and figured prominently in military life, providing signals to troops in battle. Roman society valued the hydraulic organ in particular. Powered by water pressure created with bellows, this instrument was used in civic ceremonies and even gladitorial fights. The statesman and poet Cicero compared the sound of the organ to fine food and associated it with the most sensual feelings. Instruments of Ancient Rome

12. Pythagoras, known for his Pythagorean Theory, noted the relationship between musical sound and number. His followers ascribed to him the assertion that “there is a geometry in the humming of the strings; there is music in the spacings of the spheres.” There is, in other words, a harmony of the spheres” based on mathematical ratios of movement and distance among the heavenly bodies that creates a music of it own—inaudible on earth, unfortunately, but no less real. This belief in the music of the spheres would permeate Western thought for more than 2,000 years. Music and the Cosmos

13. The same forces perceived to govern the cosmos, including music, were also understood by the ancients to govern the human soul. Music thus had the power to alter behavior in the most fundamental way, creating either harmony or discord within the spirit of the individual. • Orpheus and Euridice – Orpheus was a celebrated musician capable of calming wild beasts with his playing. The story suggest that through music, humans can bridge the otherwise unbridgeable dvide between life and death. Music and the Soul

14. Odysseus – the Odyssey • The belief that music has the power to elevate or debase the soul, to enlighten or degrade the mind, was widespread in antiquity and is still current today. The doctrine of ethos held that music was capable of arousing listeners to certain kinds of emotions and behaviors. Music and the Soul cont.

15. The same powers that affect the individual also affect the state—which is, after all, a collection of individuals. Music education was thus an element of good citizenship in ancient Greece, for youth of both sexes. “Music has the power of producing a certain effect on the moral character of the soul,” Aristotle declared, “and if it has the power to do this, it is clear that the young must be educated in it.” His teacher Plato had taken a far more restrictive approach to music education even while acknowledging its importance: Music and the State

16. “The overseers of our state must…be watchful against innovations in music and gymnastics counter to the established order, and to the best of their power guard against them…For a change to a new type of music is something to beware of as a hazard of all our fortunes. For the modes of music are never disturbed without unsettling of the most fundamental political and social conventions.” Plato

17. This fear of the subversive power of unfamiliar music (or any music) has cropped up countless times over the centuries. In the 20th century alone, older generations have condemned ragtime (in the 1910s), jazz (1920s), rock and roll (1950s and 1960s), heavy metal (1980s), and rap (1990s) as threats to the morals of American youth. The danger was seen to reside not only in the lyrics but also in the music itself, either because of its rhythm (ragtime, jazz, rock and roll) or volume and timbre (heavy metal). In one way or another, all of these repertories created anxiety about the disruption of the established order. Music and the State cont.

18. In Greek, the word mousikewas understood to encompass not only elements of melody and rhythm, but also the words being sung and even the dance that might accompany them. Poetry and song, in Greek culture, were virtually indistinguishable. Instrumental music was thus seen as an inherently lesser art than vocal music. It was welcomed in its place but held in lower esteem. Aristotle, for example, argued that vocal music was superior to instrumental music because voices, whether human or animal, are found only in creatures that have a soul. Vocal versus Instrumental Music

19. At the same time, instrumental music was regarded with a certain mixture of awe and suspicion, precisely because it was able to move listeners without recourse to words. Its power, in other words, was inexplicable and in this sense irrational. When Orpheus persuaded the gods of the underworld to breach the boundary between death and life, he did so through the power of melody and rhythm, not through the words of his song. And when this same Orpheus charmed the savage beasts, it was again with song. A parallel episode can be found in the biblical story of David, who cures Saul of melancholy not with song, but with the music of the harp alone. Vocal vs. Instrumental Cont.

20. Instrumental music is so elemental that it works at a level not fully susceptible to rational explanation. This helps explain the uneasy mix of attitudes toward instrumental music—condescension mixed with an acute awareness of its powers—that would characterize Western attitudes for the next 2,000 years. Vocal Vs. Instrumental

21. One of the most enduring legacies of classical antiquity was its division of music into two distinct categories: theory and practice. This dichotomy still pervades Western attitudes toward music. • Phythagoras and his followers represent the earliest, most extreme, and most influential form of an essentially theoretical approach to the discipline. They were concerned not with the creation or performance of music, but with the discovery of music’s essence, its mathematical basis in sound. This conception of music as a means of understanding the cosmos is evident in the ancient world’s classification of the discipline within the seven liberal arts. Theory versus Practice

22. The liberal arts were those disciplines practiced by individuals where were free—liber is the root word of our word “liberty”—as opposed to those who were limited by the demands of a particular profession, such as carpentry or blacksmithing. (In later times, it was believed these disciplines could actually make individuals free by liberating them from base instincts and fostering critical thought.) Music in this sense was not the profession of making music, but rather of contemplating it, above all its mathematical proportions. The liberal arts themselves were divided into two categories: the language arts of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic) and the mathematical quadrivium(arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). The triviumcomprised the arts of expression and persuasion, but as part of the quadrivium, music was considered an art of measurement. Theory versus Practice Cont.

23. Practicing musicians, although widely admired for their performances, were not considered among the intellectual elite: they could entertain, but they could not edify their audiences. Demodocus, who entertained at one of the banquets in the Odyssey, held a place of special honor at the Phaeacian court, but he was not among its rulers or leading statesman. Theory vs. Practice

24. Not all ancient philosophers were as convinced as Pythagoras and his followers that music should be conceived only as a sounding manifestation of abstract number. Aristoxenus preferred to base his theories on a mixture of abstract reason and empirical perception. Aristoxenus, a pupil of Aristotle, judged the size of musical intervals by relying to a large extenet on his ears, rejecting the exclusively abstract calculations of the Pythagoreans. But Aristoxenus was in the decided minority in his time, and the Pythagorean approach to theory would dominate for many centuries. Theory vs. Practice

25. Although the musical repertories of classical antiquity were largely lost to subsequent eras, Greek attitudes toward music established basic patterns of thought that still hold. The Greeks perceived music as both an art and a science, a means of providing pleasure as well as insight into the nature of the universe. They recognized music’s ethical and spiritual power and its ability to transcend reason, yet they also recognized its scientific basis in the principles of mathematical proportions. The legacy of classical antiquity would provide a strong foundation for the development of musical thought and practice in the medieval era. Conclusion