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H ugo Leichtentritt says in Music, History, and Ideas that ancient Greek music disappeared because music was considered as a secondary art. Although Greek sculptures and architecture were stolen and copied by Romans, and Homer's works have been reprinted to preserve over two thousands years, music notations were just discarded. However, we know through literature,such as Plato's Republic, and through paintings that music played an important role in Greek society. It had both religious and entertetinment purposes as in all the other ancient civilazations. Moreover, the Greeks considered music as one of the most important parts of education.
In ancient Greece people thought that "[music] could heal sickness, purify the mind and body,and work miracles in the realm of nature," just like the story of David's harp in the Old Testament (Grout 3). Leichtentritt says:
[T]he beginnings of Greek music were mythical even to
the Greeks. Mount Olympus . . . was the seat of the nine
Muses, who gave musicits name. From the north also came
to the cult of Dionysus to Greece, and this cult gave music
an extraordinary importance. From Pieria, near Mount Olympus,
came Orpheus, the incomparable singer, the peerless master
of the cithara, the lyre or guitar . . . To these northern influences,
culminating in the singing and cithra playing of Orpheus, were
added influences from the southeast, from Asia Minor. (5)
Music was essential to religious rituals like in other ancient cultures.
Even when Greek music passed beyond the mythological stage about the eighth centuryB.C., from the start Greek music had the closest connection with poetry. Homer,occasionally mentions about the lyre family instrument, he called phorminx in his epic poetry. Moreover, "Greek epic poetry was not read, nor recited aloud, but sung" (Liechtentritt 7). Though we do not know what kind of music was applied to Homer's Odyssey and Iliad, Liechtentritt says that "probably it was chanted by a bard, who perhaps accompanied himself in a primitive manner on the cithara, or was accompanied by anassistant" (7-8). He also mentions that "certain traditional melodies, manners of musical recitation were applied, and that those melodies, adapted to the metrical line, fitted the wordsat every point and could therefore be repeated" (8).
Art works also show that the lyre, and the aulos were the dominant musical instruments in Greece. The north frieze of the Parthenon (447-438 B.C.) depicted an emsemble of aulos and citharas from the procession of Panathena festival. We often find a god(s) or/and goddess(es) playing the lyre or cithara with a plectrum on the fifth century vases. Also, a number of vase paintings show music lesson with the lyre. An aulos playing boy with marching soldiers was depicted on vassals.
The lyre and its larger counterpart, the cithara were used in the cult of Apollo for solo playing and accompany the singing or reciting of poetic forms of the ode and the epic. Apollonian music, represents, like Fine Art of the Classical period,"the wonderful sense of proportion, the crystal- clear form, the serene beauty and unmarred purity"(Liechtentritt 7). The effect ofthis first class music was to calmand and uplift the listeners. Later, the lyra was developed and was used for musical education because it was simpler and easier to play for beginners and amateurs,compare to the cithara's a heavy, soliday body and, moreover, the cithara requred skills.
The aulos was also accompanied by poetry to worship Dionysus. However, Dionysian music represents "the dark, unbridled, passionate side of Greek art, its romantic upheavals, its sensual outbursts” (Liechtentritt 7). It is believed that drama was developed in this cult. The second major festival, next to the Panathena festival, was held in honor of the god Dionysus (whose worship was active in Attica) and it was open to everyone including slaves and ex-slaves.
The height of the classical epoch of Greek music was reached by the great Athenian dramatic poets, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Eurpides. They were tragic dramatists and also composers. Choruses and other musical portions were accompanied in dramas by, or alternated with, the sound of the aulos. Even nowa performance of Greek drama without music is considered quite impossible.
Although Greek music was closely tied with words, the lyre and aulos were also played as independent solo instruments from as early as the sixth century B.C. The earliest known specimen of instrumental music associated with a story, poem or scene like today's screen music, is Nomos Pythios, written by Sacadas. Contests and festivals for instrumental and vocal music became very popular after the fifth century B.C. The performers were also composers. Virtuosos appeared. They often improvised. At the same time the music itself become more complex in every way "as the instruments were developed for their needs . (Grout 3)
Many of the best amateur musicians were also physical scientists as you can think of Einstein as a violin player. Some Greek philosophers thought there was a close connection between music and astronomy. Plato's poetic form of "music of the sphere" gave the idea that it was "not only through the identity of mathematical laws that were thought to underlie both the system of musical intervals and the system of the heavenly bodies, but also through a particular correspondence of certain modes and even certain notes with the various planets" (Grout 6).
The Greek power of logical clearness, orderliness, preciseness and enlightened grasp of essentials is revealed in the manner in which Greeks interpreted, developed and applied the idea of musical notation, whether it was their own or borrowed from Asia . They discovered the system of intervals, scales, or modes and "perfected" in Greek music. Pythagoras, the great mathematician, who was also a guru and founder of a religious society, laid the indispensable acoustic and mathematical foundation of music: he found the elementary ratios of the intervals, which remind us the perfect ratios for the Parthenon. (Leichtentritt 14)
The Spartans and the Athenians took the great care in prividing a balanced education for citizens and soldiers alike. Greek thinkers believed that a balance education of gymnastics and music were important to cordinate the body and mind. Plato insists in the Republic, which was written about 380 B.C., the need for a balance of those two in education:
[T]oo much gymnastics will make him uncivilized, violent,
and ignorant. "He who mingles music with gymnastic in the
fairest proportions, and best attempts them to the soul,
maybe rightly called the true musician." But only certain
kind of music are suitable. Melodies of expressive softness
and indolence are to be avoided in the education of those
who are being trained to became governors of the ideal state;
for them, only the Dorian and Phrygian 'tunes' are to be
retained as promoting the virtues of courage and temperance
respectively. (Grout 8)
Thus, Greek opinion about the aulos was revised and "regarded as barbaric because of its tone" and was excluded by scholars from musical education in spite of being one of the Greeks favorite instruments. The cult music with the aulos that produces "shrill piercing tone,"are often described as "frenzied" or "sensual. " Aulos-makers and aulos-players were to be excluded from the state.
The harp, depicted in various shapes and known as various names, such as pektis and magadis, also was considered an alien instrument in Greece (and also Rome), coming from the Orient. The pektis was played by the women of Lydia. Sappho, a poetess, "encouraged the playing the instruments on Lesbos, where the magadis also was well known" (Bragard 33). Since the harps had "a large number of strings of high pitch," they could "yield a sort of chromatic voluptuous music" (Bragard 33). Plato condemned it because its greater number of strings and notes facilitated modulation, instability and, therewith hedone--that is,sensory pleasure" (Sachs 136). He also said that "certain keys, tonalities, and melodic formulas fortify the human character" (Liechtentritt 16). He rejected the Lydian and Ionian tunes but Dorian and Phrygian.
Greeks also associated percussion instruments with the orgiastic cult rituals. "The drum had no place in any other form of music, including military music " (Sachs 128). The players of the both Greek and Roman drums and harps were almost exclusively women in the cults of Dionysos and Cybele .
Aristotle, a scientist as well as philosopher, is less severe than Plato about the particular rhythms and modes. He allows the use of music "for amusements and intellectual enjoyment as for education, but he agrees with Plato that all music used for educating the young should be regulated by law" (Grout 9). Greek philosophers emphasized the effects of music on the will and thus on the character and conduct of human beings. Aristotle explained how music works on the will in the Politics:
Music directly imitates (that is, represents) the passions or states of the soul--gentleness, anger courage, temperance, and their opposites and other qualities; hence, when one listens to music that imitates a certain passion, he becomes imbued with the same passion; and if over a long time he habitually listens to the kind of music that rouses ignoble passions his whole character will be shaped to an ignoble form. In short, if one listens to the wrong kind of music he will become the wrong kind of person; but, conversely, if he listens to the right kind of music he will tend to become the right kind of person. (Grout 7)
As we can see, music, which had the power to control human souls, was an essential part of Greek life. It permeated their religion, science, philosophy and other forms of art. Contrary to Leichtentritt's pessimistic opinion, music wasn't considered to be a secondary art in Greek culture. It was a primary part of Greek art. Even the Romans, who conquered Greece, accepted the cultural superiority of Greeks, including their music, and adopted much of it to their own culture.
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