The Modes of Ancient Greek Music

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Title: The Modes of Ancient Greek Music

Author: David Binning Monro

Release Date: July 20, 2012 [EBook #40288]

Language: English

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THE MODES

OF

ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC

MONRO

London

HENRY FROWDE

Oxford University Press Warehouse

Amen Corner, E.C.

New York

MACMILLAN & CO., 66, FIFTH AVENUE

The Modes

of

Ancient Greek Music

BY

D. B. MONRO, M.A.

PROVOST OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD

HONORARY DOCTOR OF LETTERS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN

Oxford

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

1894

Oxford

PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

BY HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

DEDICATED

TO THE

PROVOST AND FELLOWS

OF TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN

xeinosynês heneka

Transcriber's Note:

The original text contained many words in the Greek alphabet. These words have been transliterated to the Latin alphabet. They appear in the text in bold font.

e.g. τροποι is written tropoi

PREFACE

The present essay is the sequel of an article on Greek music which the author contributed to the new edition of Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (London, 1890-91, art. Musica). In that article the long-standing controversy regarding the nature of the ancient musical Modes was briefly noticed, and some reasons were given for dissenting from the views maintained by Westphal, and now very generally accepted. A full discussion of the subject would have taken up more space than was then at the author's disposal, and he accordingly proposed to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press to treat the question in a separate form. He has now to thank them for undertaking the publication of a work which is necessarily addressed to a very limited circle.

The progress of the work has been more than once delayed by the accession of materials. Much of it was written before the author had the opportunity of studying two very interesting documents first made known in the course of last year in the Bulletin de correspondance hellénique and the Philologus, viz. the so-called Seikelos inscription from Tralles, and a fragment of the Orestes of Euripides. But a much greater surprise was in store. The book was nearly ready for publication last November, when the newspapers reported that the French scholars engaged in excavating on the site of Delphi had found several pieces of musical notation, in particular a hymn to Apollo dating from the third century B.C. As the known remains of Greek music were either miserably brief, or so late as hardly to belong to classical antiquity, it was thought best to wait for the publication of the new material. The French School of Athens must be congratulated upon the good fortune which has attended their enterprise, and also upon the excellent form in which its results have been placed, within a comparatively short time, at the service of students. The writer of these pages, it will be readily understood, had especial reason to be interested in the announcement of a discovery which might give an entirely new complexion to the whole argument. It will be for the reader to determine whether the main thesis of the book has gained or lost by the new evidence.

Mr. Hubert Parry prefaces his suggestive treatment of Greek music by some remarks on the difficulty of the subject. 'It still seems possible,' he observes, 'that a large portion of what has passed into the domain of well-authenticated fact is complete misapprehension, as Greek scholars have not time for a thorough study of music up to the standard required to judge securely of the matters in question, and musicians as a rule are not extremely intimate with Greek' (The Art of Music, p. 24). To the present writer, who has no claim to the title of musician, the scepticism expressed in these words appears to be well founded. If his interpretation of the ancient texts furnishes musicians like Mr. Parry with a somewhat more trustworthy basis for their criticism of Greek music as an art, his object will be fully attained.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE MODES OF ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC.

§ 1. Introductory.

The modes of ancient Greek music are of interest to us, not only as the forms under which the Fine Art of Music was developed by a people of extraordinary artistic capability, but also on account of the peculiar ethical influence ascribed to them by the greatest ancient philosophers. It appears from a well-known passage in the Republic of Plato, as well as from many other references, that in ancient Greece there were certain kinds or forms of music, which were known by national or tribal names—Dorian, Ionian, Phrygian, Lydian and the like: that each of these was believed to be capable, not only of expressing particular emotions, but of reacting on the sensibility in such a way as to exercise a powerful and specific influence in the formation of character: and consequently that the choice, among these varieties, of the musical forms to be admitted into the education of the state, was a matter of the most serious practical concern. If on a question of this kind we are inclined to distrust the imaginative temper of Plato we have only to turn to the discussion of the same subject in the Politics of Aristotle, and we shall find the Platonic view criticised in some important details, but treated in the main as being beyond controversy.

The word harmonia, 'harmony,' applied to these forms of music by Plato and Aristotle, means literally 'fitting' or 'adjustment,' hence the 'tuning' of a series of notes on any principle, the formation of a 'scale' or 'gamut.' Other ancient writers use the word tropos, whence the Latin modus and our mood or 'mode,' generally employed in this sense by English scholars. The word 'mode' is open to the objection that in modern music it has a meaning which assumes just what it is our present business to prove or disprove about the 'modes' of Greek music. The word 'harmony,' however, is still more misleading, and on the whole it seems best to abide by the established use of 'mode' as a translation of harmonia, trusting that the context will show when the word has its distinctively modern sense, and when it simply denotes a musical scale of some particular kind.

The rhythm of music is also recognized by both Plato and Aristotle as an important element in its moral value. On this part of the subject, however, we have much less material for a judgement. Plato goes on to the rhythms after he has done with the modes, and lays down the principle that they must not be complex or varied, but must be the rhythms of a sober and brave life. But he confesses that he cannot tell which these are (poia de poiou biou mimêmata ouk echô legein), and leaves the matter for future inquiry [1].

§ 2. Statement of the question.

What then are the musical forms to which Plato and Aristotle ascribe this remarkable efficacy? And what is the source of their influence on human emotion and character?

There are two obvious relations in which the scales employed in any system of music may stand to each other. They may be related as two keys of the same mode in modern music: that is to say, we may have to do with a scale consisting of a fixed succession of intervals, which may vary in pitch—may be 'transposed,' as we say, from one pitch or key to another. Or the scales may differ as the Major mode differs from the Minor, namely in the order in which the intervals follow each other. In modern music we have these two modes, and each of them may be in any one of twelve keys. It is evidently possible, also, that a name such as Dorian or Lydian might denote a particular mode taken in a particular key—that the scale so called should possess a definite pitch as well as a definite series of intervals.

According to the theory which appears now to prevail among students of Greek music, these famous names had a double application. There was a Dorian mode as well as a Dorian key, a Phrygian mode and a Phrygian key, and so on. This is the view set forth by Boeckh in the treatise which may be said to have laid the foundations of our knowledge of Greek music (De Metris Pindari, lib. III. cc. vii-xii). It is expounded, along with much subsidiary speculation, in the successive volumes which we owe to the fertile pen of Westphal; and it has been adopted in the learned and excellent Histoire et Théorie de la Musique de l'Antiquité of M. Gevaert. According to these high authorities the Greeks had a system of key (tonoi), and also a system of modes (harmoniai), the former being based solely upon difference of pitch, the latter upon the 'form' or species (eidos) of the octave scale, that is to say, upon the order of the intervals which compose it.

§ 3. The Authorities.

The sources of our knowledge are the various systematic treatises upon music which have come down to us from Greek antiquity,