Ancient Greek Music

[Edward Carwithen]

Ouch...

It is my understanding (and I would have to go back to my sources to be
positive) that there is very little agreement on what the music of the
greeks sounded like.  We have the instruments, or pictures thereof, but we
don't know for sure how they were tuned, or what melodic devices were used.

The church modes, Ionian, dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian, aolian, and
locrian and the corresponding hypo-dorian, etc. were a result of the high
regard that the middle ages had for the "classical" greek culture, and the
names had no relation to actual greek music.  

We do know that music and poetry were combined in various ways in greek
drama, we know that there were singers, and instrumentalists, but we just
don't have any way to know what any of it sounded like as there was no
method for writing it down.  

Western music history is in many ways a history of notation.  Most of the
world's music is passed down through oral tradition.  Only in Western music
was notation developed, and that because the music became more complicated
harmonically than the oral tradition could handle.  

This is pretty rudimentary, but might be helpful.


At 09:57 PM 2/1/98 -0500, you wrote:
>>Ann(e)  Beetem mentioned "beautiful ancient Greek music" which got me
>>wondering if such a thing exists. Did the ancient Greeks have musical
>>notation? Another thing I heard waas that not one Greek lyre has been
>>preserved to the present day. These are often the forst illustration in
>>piano history books. Any comments?
>>
>>
>>Philip Jamison
>>West Chester, PA
>
>
>Of course it did.  Where do you think Dorian, Phyrgian, Lydian,....modes
>came from?  Did they have notation?   I am not certain.   The last time I
>read about and wrote about Greek music I was in grade  school.    There are
>sufficient memorializations of Greeks playing music in the plays, in
>sculpture and architectural friezes to consider as evidence.
>
>ab
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>Anne Beetem
>Harpsichords & Historic Pianos
>2070 Bingham Ct.
>Reston, VA  20191
>abeetem@wizard.net
>
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>
Ed Carwithen
Oregon