Music of ancient Greece
Music of Ancient Greece is obtained in just a few examples. One of the most important testimonies of written ancient music ever is the Seikilos stele. 1588 was the Zarlino " Mesomedeshymnen " (who is an appendix to a treatise of Dionysius ), 1883, the " Seikilos Song " was discovered an inscription with musical signs on a grave stele. 1893/94 were two paeans from Delphi, carved in stone on Athenerschatzhaus made available to the public. Then were found only on some papyri fragments. The music of the ancient Greeks we know of the matter only from the writings of theorists of antiquity, which are obtained in fairly large numbers. Among the Greeks, the music took on a central role in social life. If you follow, for example, Plato, the music is even an essential influence on the formation of a human being.
In the great cultic festivals of the Greeks ( the Olympic, Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian ) the arts competitions ( poetic and musical ) played a prominent role. Specifically, the Pythian Games were originally only musical in honor of Apollo at Delphi. The winner was adorned with a laurel wreath, to which the branches were brought from the valley temple in solemn procession.
The older history of Greek music is so riddled with myths and legends that the historical core is difficult recognizable. The invention of musical instruments such as the music at all is attributed to the gods ( Apollo, Hermes, Athena, Pan). Amphion and Orpheus could revive stones and subdue animals. More mythical figures are Linos, because of his song, and Marsyas, who was killed because of his flute playing of Apollo out of jealousy (see History of Music ).
The practical musical training in ancient Greece
The musical performance can basically only iconographically, ie from pictures, eg on vessels to be tapped. Part but are also literary evidence, as in Homer's "Odyssey ". The cultural impact of Asia Minor and Egypt was significant. For practical music making of the Greeks counted mere singing or singing with accompaniment of stringed instruments ( Kitharodie ) or wind instruments ( Aulodie ), as well as purely instrumental string ( Kitharistik ) or flute ( Auletik ).
The most important and for art music almost alone in eligible instruments were as lyres lyre and kithara and the aulos. The Lyra had a domed, the cithara a flat sound box. The string number two was a long time 7, later it increased significantly. The Magadis may have been a stringed instrument (harp or psaltery ) with 20 strings, was played on the in octaves. All stringed instruments of the Greeks were both plucked as played with a pick. This was known already in the 2nd millennium BC, as the representation on the sarcophagus of Hagia Triada (approx. 1400 BC ) occupied. Rhythm instruments played only a subordinate role and were mainly in the Dionysian cult and the symposium used. Played they were mainly of women and, in the mythical area of satyrs or silenes. The main rhythm instruments are similar to the tympanum (a type of hand drum similar to the tambourine ), and the pairs played krotala, hand clappers, modern in form and playing castanets.
The always played in pairs aulos was a wind instrument with a single or double reed which was built in different sizes; the syrinx (panpipe ) was a subordinate instrument. The songs, which invented the composers were given specific names, similar to the master singers; the common name was nomos (law, sentence ).
Famous for example, was the Pythian nomos of the flute player Sakadas ( 585 BC), who first put it through that at the Pythian games in addition to the kithara and the aulos was approved.
To the Kitharodik made himself particularly the still 50 years older Terpander deserves which is often regarded as the founder of real musical art forms among the Greeks.
Further, as an outstanding musician mentioned:
- Klonas who lived before and after Sakadas Terpander; an inventor of important forms of Aulodie;
- Archilochus (c. 650 BC), the naturalized instead of the previously usual dactylic hexameter alone more popular lyrical rhythms ( iambic );
- The lyric poet Alcaeus,
- The poet Sappho
Overview
Pythagoras is considered as a kind of "original music theorist ." He was a mathematician, mystic and philosopher. Probably inspired by the Egyptian mathematics, he found - as incorrect in the legend Pythagoras described in the forge - integer proportional relationships, which he interpreted as the best possible sound intervals. At least the consonance perception of the West is based today on these vibration conditions. The proportions of these, the main intervals ', 1:2:3:4 ( octave, fifth, fourth ), were equally as " world formula " of the Pythagoreans, that is related to all areas of life and knowledge. From Asia Minor, the landscape Phrygia, on the other hand was an important element of the practical art of music: the wildly passionate music of the cult of Dionysus home there along with the accompanying, sharp and well- sounding wind instrument, the aulos. The fusion of these Phrygian ( Dionysian ) Tonkunst directed to the strict measure, by Apollon personalized home Doric took place in Attic tragedy, after it had become the own genre.
According to the research, for example, Rudolf Westphal ( Greek rhythm and harmony ), there is no doubt that the music on the powerful effect of the ancient tragedy had a major share. Not only the choirs, but also the individual speeches were sung.
For the greatest display of their funds came the Greek music in the tragedy, which was a union of poetry, music and drama ( facial expressions, Hypo criticism ) in a similar sense as the modern musical drama; the choruses were sung, and many monologues were composed. Sorry, there is no tragedy music has been found, so we have no concrete idea of such a committee. To the extent, however, as the music came as a special art to ever higher education, the uplifting effect had to reduce what they had exercised in the former close association with the art of poetry. The musical virtuosity is now beginning to come to the fore, the art of music sought to emancipate themselves more and more of the art of poetry. But the music, as well as the language to this very time had (5th century BCE ) experienced by the blossoming of sophistic philosophy an enrichment that caused them in their turn to go their own way, and it takes place the divorce of music of the poetry.
The question of how this music was designed closer must remain virtually unanswered. The sparse from this period across rescued, discovered in the 16th century, fragments of ancient Greek music assets, largely deciphered (eg Friedrich Bellermann ) via sound and music making to betray although less. The vocal music was probably in close connection with the poetry; generated approximately from the meter ( meter ) their rhythm. Freedom and independence in the movement, however, is just in the instrumental music hardly imagine. This is also the tonräumliche mobility, as they allowed the three Tongeschlechter. Polyphony it was not very likely. In the lyrical part of the drama, in the choruses, the sound developed in cooperation of men's and boys' voices in octaves; occasionally probably means melody foreign intervals in the accompaniment by instruments ( lyra, kithara, aulos ).
This poetry, known as the chorus, which was also maintained as an independent branch of art and by artists like Ibycus and Pindar ( 522-442 ) came to full flower, turned out early the melische poetry over a lyric in the true sense of the word, because the Lyra, which given as an attribute of Apollo the art form ever the name, here was an essential tool of the lecture.
The main difference of these two branches of lyric art was but the fact that the former brought the sensations of a set of broadly expressed, whereas the latter undertook to describe the states of the individual soul, in which the musical part, the Melos, a freer movement and independent emergence was permitted and appropriate. This predominance of the musical element was the real charm of Melian poetry after the same was BC formed in the 7th and 6th century on the west coast of Asia Minor by the residents who are ionic and Aeolian Greeks to that perfection which we at the Dithyramben Arion, the love songs of Sappho, admire the drinking songs of Anacreon, an irritant, powerful enough to the older more modest kind of folk song, the art of rhapsodies, which had contented himself with the events of the heroic age in recitative manner and without accompaniment of an instrument carry forward to displace soon. Plutarch dated in its dialogical drafted music history at the period of the recent music of Thaletas (670 ), the founder of the Spartan Choral Dances ( Gymnopädien ), and Sakadas; at this time to have been introduced the newer enharmonic.
From now on the decline of Greek art is unstoppable; least could the tragedy to maintain its importance as a work of art, after the union of the poet and composer, excavated in a person as such had existed in Aeschylus and Sophocles by an art- historical necessity and thus the uniform interaction of its two most important factors was made impossible.
Even Euripides had the musical composition of his plays another left expertly educated, and in his poetry managed rational calculation instead of the dithyrambic dramatist before the earlier swing.
The loss of independence of Greece as a result of the Battle of Chaeronea ( 338 BC) completed the work of destruction and approves a period of art that has been achieved despite its short duration of only one and a half centuries later on significance of their achievements no.
The next centuries would be be described as musically barren, the science would not have been working to secure the practical profit of the previous period theoretically creative place of the late Art Spirit. While Plato, Aristotle, the essence of music, make their ethical and aesthetic significance to the subject of their research, the theory is its main representative in Aristoxenus of Tarentum ( 350 BC ), a pupil of Aristotle, which, due to the already two centuries earlier by Pythagoras salaried research the music theory at a time the conditions brought corresponding statements in accordance with mathematical, physical and acoustic side.
As a key distinguishing feature of the ancient Greek by the modern music its melodic diversity must apply as they occur to the Tongeschlechtern and shades to light. Among the former, of which there were three, the diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic, one understood the modifications of the intervals in the tetrachord, the enharmonic ancestry to the interval of the Fourth Elton, while the shade (chroma) still referred finer intonation differences.
Whether the same came in practical music for use or expect Direction only as results can be considered speculation, is still a contentious issue; However, the accuracy of the first assumption is supported by the fact that the Church Father Clement of Alexandria ( died about 220) his congregation the use of chromatic melodies, as the dignity of worship disadvantageous prohibited.
The Music of Byzantium
Above all, the church music of the Eastern Roman Byzantine Empire provides a crucial link between the music of the ancient and medieval history of music; they have decisively shaped the Church Music in Eastern Europe and now lives in a modified form continued in the Greek Church music.