Εγκυκλοπαίδεια της αρχαίας ελληνικής μουσικής

Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
ωδός, (συναίρ. του αοιδός)· τραγουδιστής. Ηρακλείδης Ποντικός (Περί Πολιτειών 6): "Λακεδαιμόνιοι τον Λέσβιον ωδόν [Τέρπανδρον] ετίμησαν" (οι Λακεδαιμόνιοι τίμησαν τον Λέσβιο αοιδό [Τέρπανδρο]).
Πλάτων (Νόμοι Ζ', 812Β): "τους του Διονύσου εξηκοντούτας ωδούς" (οι εξηντάρηδες τραγουδιστές [αοιδοί] του Διόνυσου).

Πρβ. και Κλήμ. Αλεξ. Προτρεπτικός 1, 2.

http://www.musipedia.gr/

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Plato, Laws
Plat. Laws 7.812b

Νόμοι Ζ', 812Β

812β]
Κλεινίας
ὀρθῶς.

Ἀθηναῖος
ἆρ᾽ οὖν οὐ μετὰ τὸν γραμματιστὴν ὁ κιθαριστὴς ἡμῖν προσρητέος;

Κλεινίας
τί μήν;

Ἀθηναῖος
τοῖς κιθαρισταῖς μὲν τοίνυν ἡμᾶς δοκῶ τῶν ἔμπροσθεν λόγων ἀναμνησθέντας τὸ προσῆκον νεῖμαι τῆς τε διδασκαλίας ἅμα καὶ πάσης τῆς περὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα παιδεύσεως.

Κλεινίας
ποίων δὴ πέρι λέγεις;

Ἀθηναῖος
ἔφαμεν, οἶμαι, τοὺς τοῦ Διονύσου τοὺς ἑξηκοντούτας ᾠδοὺς διαφερόντως εὐαισθήτους δεῖν γεγονέναι περί

Plato. Platonis Opera, ed. John Burnet. Oxford University Press. 1903.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plat.+Laws+7.812b&fromdoc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0165
 
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Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
Ωλήν, μυθικο-ιστορικός επικός ποιητής και μουσικός της πιο μακρινής εποχής, του οποίου το όνομα συνδεόταν με τη λατρεία του Απόλλωνα.
Σύμφωνα με τον Ηρόδοτο (Ιστορίαι Δ', 35), ήρθε από τη Λυκία της νότιας Μ. Ασίας, ιερή χώρα του Απόλλωνα, και συνέθεσε τους πρώτους ύμνους, που εκτελούνταν στο ιερό του Απόλλωνα στη Δήλο: "ούτος δε ο Ωλήν και τους άλλους τους παλαιούς ύμνους εποίησε, εκ Λυκίης ελθών, τους αειδομένους εν Δήλω". Η Σούδα και ο Ησύχιος τον αποκαλούν Δυμαίο ή Υπερβόρειο (από τον μακρινό Βορρά) ή Λύκιο (από τη Λυκία)· η Σούδα προτιμά το επίθετο Λύκιος, γιατί, ήρθε από την πόλη Ξάνθο της Λυκίας.
Ο Παυσανίας (Ι, 5, 8) λέει ότι "ο Ωλήν έγινε προφήτης του Απόλλωνα και ο πρώτος επικός ποιητής". Τον αναφέρει επίσης συχνά στο έργο του (Α', 18, 5· Β', 13, 3· 7, 8· Η', 21, 3· Θ', 27, 2).
Μερικοί μύθοι αποδίδουν στον ποιητή αυτό την επινόηση του εξάμετρου και την ίδρυση του Δελφικού Μαντείου.

http://www.musipedia.gr/

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Herodotus, The Histories
Hdt. 4.35.1

Ηρόδοτο, Ιστορίαι Δ', 35

αὗται μὲν δὴ ταύτην τιμὴν ἔχουσι πρὸς τῶν Δήλου οἰκητόρων. φασὶ δὲ οἱ αὐτοὶ οὗτοι καὶ τὴν Ἄργην τε καὶ τὴν Ὦπιν ἐούσας παρθένους ἐξ Ὑπερβορέων κατὰ τοὺς αὐτοὺς τούτους ἀνθρώπους πορευομένας ἀπικέσθαι ἐς Δῆλον ἔτι πρότερον Ὑπερόχης τε καὶ Λαοδίκης.

Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0125:book=4:chapter=35:section=1
 
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Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
ωσχοφορικά, ή οσχοφορικά, μέλη· τραγούδια που εκτελούνταν κατά την τελετή των Ωσχοφορίων. Πρόκλ. (Χρηστομ. 28): "Ωσχοφορικά μέλη τραγουδούσαν οι Αθηναίοι· δύο νέοι ντυμένοι με γυναικεία φορέματα, κρατώντας βλαστάρια αμπέλου με σταφύλια (τσαμπιά, που ονόμαζαν ώσχους ή ώσχες) έσερναν το χορό". Τα ωσχοφόρια (από το όσχος ή ώσχος, όσχη ή ώσχη, δηλ. βλαστάρι από κλήμα με σταφύλι) ήταν μέρος των αθηναϊκών εορτών που ονομάζονταν Σκίρα (τα), και τελούνταν προς τιμή της Αθηνάς· στα ωσχοφόρια αγόρια στην ηλικία της εφηβείας, φορώντας γυναικεία και κρατώντας τσαμπιά, προχωρούσαν σε πομπή από το ναό του Διόνυσου στο ναό της Σκιράδας Αθηνάς.
Κατά τον Πρόκλο , ο Θησέας καθιέρωσε τη γιορτή αυτή, μετά τη σωτηρία των επτά νέων και επτά νεανίδων από τον Μινώταυρο.

http://www.musipedia.gr/

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PROCLUS,
Cours de Littérature

Πρόκλ., Χρηστομ. 28

Ὠσχοφορικὰ δὲ μέλη παρὰ Ἀθηναίοις ᾔδετο. Τοῦ χοροῦ δὲ δύο νεανίαι κατὰ γυναῖκας ἐστολισμένοι κλῆμά τ´ ἀμπέλου κομίζοντες μεστὸν εὐθαλῶν βοτρύων (ἐκάλουν δὲ αὐτὸ ὤσχην, ἀφ´ οὗ καὶ τοῖς μέλεσιν ἡ ἐπωνυμία) τῆς ἑορτῆς καθηγοῦντο. Ἄρξαι δέ φασι Θησέα πρῶτον τοῦ ἔργου· ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἑκούσιος ὑποστὰς τὸν εἰς Κρήτην πλοῦν ἀπήλλαξε τὴν πατρίδα τῆς κατὰ τὸν δασμὸν συμφορᾶς, χαριστήρια ἀποδιδοὺς Ἀθηνᾷ καὶ Διονύσῳ, οἳ αὐτῷ κατὰ τὴν νῆσον τὴν Δίαν ἐπεφάνησαν, ἔπραττε τοῦτο δυσὶ νεανίαις ἐσκιατραφημένοις χρησάμενος πρὸς τὴν ἱερουργίαν ὑπηρέταις. Ἦν δὲ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἡ παραπομπὴ ἐκ τοῦ Διονυσιακοῦ ἱεροῦ εἰς τὸ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς τῆς Σκιράδος τέμενος. Εἵπετο δὲ τοῖς νεανίαις ὁ χορὸς καὶ ᾖδε τὰ μέλη. Ἐξ ἑκάστης δὲ φύλης ἔφηβοι διημιλλῶντο πρὸς ἀλλήλους δρόμῳ· καὶ τούτων ὁ πρότερος ἐγεύετο ἐκ τῆς πενταπλῆς λεγομένης φιάλης, ἣ συνεκιρνᾶτο ἐλαίῳ καὶ οἴνῳ καὶ μέλιτι καὶ τυρῷ καὶ ἀλφίτοις.

http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/erudits/photius/proclus.htm
 
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Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
Ακρόαμα
(από το ακροώμαι = ακούω με ιδιαίτερη προσοχή)· μια μουσική εκτέλεση· καθετί που ακούει κανείς, παρακολουθεί με ιδιαίτερη ευχαρίστηση· ένα τραγούδι, μια απαγγελία κτλ. Ο όρος χρησιμοποιήθηκε για να σημάνει όλα τα είδη ψυχαγωγίας που προσφέρονταν στα συμπόσια. Ξεν. Συμπόσ. (2, 2): "ού μόνον δείπνον άμεμπτον παρέθηκας, άλλα και θεάματα και ακροάματα ήδιστα παρέχεις". Οι κυριότερες ψυχαγωγίες στα συμπόσια ήταν τραγούδι και χορός, από τον καιρό του Ομήρου· "μολπή τ'ορχηστύς τε, τα γαρ τ'αναθήματα δαιτός" (το τραγούδι και ο χορός είναι τα στολίδια του συμποσίου). Αλλά εκτός από το τραγούδι και το χορό υπήρχαν πολλά άλλα είδη ψυχαγωγίας: κωμικοί μονόλογοι, ταχυδακτυλουργίες κτλ.· και μουσικοί προσλαμβάνονταν γι' αυτόν το σκοπό (ιδιαίτερα γυναίκες, αυλητρίδες και "ψάλτριες")· επίσης, μίμοι, ταχυδακτυλουργοί, κωμικοί, αστειολόγοι. Τα ακροάματα έπαιρναν συχνά τέτοια έκταση στη διάρκεια των συμποσίων, ώστε είχαν το χαρακτήρα μεικτής μουσικοθεατρικής εκτέλεσης. H λέξη ακρόαμα (ιδιαίτερα στον πληθ.: ακροάματα) σήμαινε, συνεκδοχικά, και τους ίδιους τους εκτελεστές· Αθήν. (IB', 526): "αυλητρίδας και ψαλτρίας και τα τοιαύτα των ακροαμάτων" (αυλητρίδες και ψάλτριες και οι παρόμοιες ψυχαγωγίες ή "ψυχαγωγοί").

Πηγές
Σόλωνας Μιχαηλίδης, Εγκυκλοπαίδεια της αρχαίας ελληνικής μουσικής, Εκδόσεις Μορφωτικού Ιδρύματος Εθνικής Τραπέζης, 1999, ISBN: 960-250-174-Χ

http://www.musipedia.gr/wiki/Ακρόαμα
 
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Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
Xenophon, Symposium
Xen. Sym. 2.2

Ξεν. Συμπόσ., 2, 2

[2] ἐπεὶ δὲ αὐτοῖς ἡ αὐλητρὶς μὲν ηὔλησεν, ὁ δὲ παῖς ἐκιθάρισε, καὶ ἐδόκουν μάλα ἀμφότεροι ἱκανῶς εὐφραίνειν, εἶπεν ὁ Σωκράτης: νὴ Δί᾽, ὦ Καλλία, τελέως ἡμᾶς ἑστιᾷς. οὐ γὰρ μόνον δεῖπνον ἄμεμπτον παρέθηκας, ἀλλὰ καὶ θεάματα καὶ ἀκροάματα ἥδιστα παρέχεις.

Xenophon. Xenophontis opera omnia, vol. 2, 2nd ed. Oxford, Clarendon Press. 1921 (repr. 1971).

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Xen.+Sym.+2.2&fromdoc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0211
 
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Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
[''Οι κυριότερες ψυχαγωγίες στα συμπόσια ήταν τραγούδι και χορός, από τον καιρό του Ομήρου· "μολπή τ'ορχηστύς τε, τα γαρ τ'αναθήματα δαιτός" (το τραγούδι και ο χορός είναι τα στολίδια του συμποσίου).'']

Homer, Odyssey
Hom. Il. 2.345

150
αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ πόσιος καὶ ἐδητύος ἐξ ἔρον ἕντο
μνηστῆρες, τοῖσιν μὲν ἐνὶ φρεσὶν ἄλλα μεμήλει,
μολπή τ’ ὀρχηστύς τε· τὰ γὰρ τ’ ἀναθήματα δαιτός·
κῆρυξ δ’ ἐν χερσὶν κίθαριν περικαλλέα θῆκεν
Φημίῳ, ὅς ῥ’ ἤειδε παρὰ μνηστῆρσιν ἀνάγκῃ.
155

http://perseus.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.237:1.GreekTexts
 
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Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
[''H λέξη ακρόαμα (ιδιαίτερα στον πληθ.: ακροάματα) σήμαινε, συνεκδοχικά, και τους ίδιους τους εκτελεστές· Αθήν. (IB', 526): "αυλητρίδας και ψαλτρίας και τα τοιαύτα των ακροαμάτων" (αυλητρίδες και ψάλτριες και οι παρόμοιες ψυχαγωγίες ή "ψυχαγωγοί").'']

ATHÉNÉE DE NAUCRATIS
Le Livre XII des Deipnosophistes

Αθήν., IB', 526

Οὕτω δ' ἐξελύθησαν διὰ τὴν ἄκαιρον μέθην ὥστε τινὲς αὐτῶν οὔτε ἀνατέλλοντα τὸν ἥλιον οὔτε δυόμενον ἑωράκασιν. Νόμον τε ἔθεντο, ὃς ἔτι καὶ ἐφ' ἡμῶν ἦν, τὰς αὐλητρίδας καὶ τὰς ψαλτρίας καὶ πάντα τὰ τοιαῦτα (526c) τῶν ἀκροαμάτων τὰ μισθώματα λαμβ άνειν ἀπὸ πρωὶ μέχρι μέσου ἡμέρας καὶ μέχρι λύχνων ἁφῶν· ἀπὸ δὲ τούτου τὴν λοιπὴν νύκτα ἦσαν πρὸς τῷ μεθύειν. Θεόπομπος δ' ἐν πεντεκαιδεκάτῃ ῾Ιστοριῶν χιλίους φησὶν ἄνδρας αὐτῶν ἁλουργεῖς φοροῦντας στολὰς ἀστυπολεῖν· ὃ δὴ καὶ βασιλεῦσιν σπάνιον τότ' ἦν καὶ περισπούδαστον, ἰσοστάσιος γὰρ ἦν ἡ πορφύρα πρὸς ἄργυρον ἐξεταζομένη. Τοιγαροῦν διὰ τὴν τοιαύτην ἀγωγὴν ἐν τυραννίδι καὶ στάσεσι γενόμενοι αὐτῇ πατρίδι διεφθάρησαν. Ταὐτὰ εἴρηκεν περὶ αὐτῶν καὶ Διογένης ὁ Βαρυλώνιος ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ τῶν Νόμων. Κοινῶς δὲ περὶ πάντων ᾽Ιώνων τρυφῆς ᾽Αντιφάνης ἐν Δωδώνῃ τάδε λέγει·
πόθεν οἰκήτωρ, ἤ τις ᾽Ιώνων
τρυφεραμπεχόνων ἁβρὸς ἡδυπαθὴς
ὄχλος ὥρμηται;
Θεόφραστος δ' ἐν τῷ περὶ ῾Ηδονῆς καὶ δὴ καὶ τοὺς ῞Ιωνάς φησι διὰ τὴν ὑπερβολὴν τῆς τρυφῆς... ἔτι καὶ νῦν ἡ χρυσῆ παροιμία διαμεμένηκε.

http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/erudits/athenee/livre12grec2.htm
 

Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
Όμηρος

Κεντεποζίδου Ελένη
Ο Béla Bartόκ ως εθνομουσικολόγος

ΠΑΝΕΠΙΣΤΗΜΙΟ ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΙΑΣ
ΤΜΗΜΑ ΜΟΥΣΙΚΗΣ ΕΠΙΣΤΗΜΗΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΕΧΝΗΣ
ΠΤΥΧΙΑΚΗ ΕΡΓΑΣΙΑ
2008

''Το 1940 ο Bartόκ μετανάστευσε με τη γυναίκα του στις Η.Π.Α.. Εκεί ο Dr. Herzog
στο πανεπιστήμιο της Κολομβίας του πρότεινε να μελετήσει μία μεγάλη συλλογή
ηχογραφήσεων (περίπου 2500 δίσκοι) που έγιναν στη Γιουγκοσλαβία το 1934-1935
από τον Milman Parry, καθηγητή κλασικής φιλολογίας του πανεπιστημίου του
Χάρβαρντ. Δεν είχε γίνει συστηματική μελέτη αυτού του υλικού μέχρι τότε, αφού ο
συλλέκτης του πέθανε λίγο μετά την επιστροφή του. Το μεγαλύτερο μέρος των
δίσκων ήταν αφιερωμένο στο ηρωικό έπος της Γιουγκοσλαβίας. Αυτό ήταν που
ενδιέφερε τον Parry. Ο στόχος του ήταν να ανακαλύψει την σχέση της Ηλιάδας και
της Οδύσσειας με τα σημερινά βαλκανικά λεγόμενα «αντρικά τραγούδια». Πίστευε
ότι είχε αναπτυχθεί μία μεγάλη παράδοση προφορικής ποίησης αυτών των έργων που
υπήρχε ακόμα στα Βαλκάνια. Αλλά μεταξύ αυτών υπήρχαν και περισσότεροι από 200
δίσκους με σερβοκροατικά «γυναικεία τραγούδια» με λυρικό χαρακτήρα και μουσικά
πιο ενδιαφέροντα. Ο Bartόκ επέλεξε να ασχοληθεί με αυτό το τμήμα της συλλογής
και να το προετοιμάσει για έκδοση. Ασχολήθηκε ωστόσο και με τα επικά τραγούδια
της Γιουγκοσλαβίας, γεγονός που είναι γενικά άγνωστο26.
Εκεί είχε ένα δωμάτιο στη διάθεσή του και δούλευε χωρίς καμία επίβλεψη. Σε ένα
γράμμα του προς τον Zoltàn Kodàly περιγράφει την κατάσταση ως εξής:
«Είχα πλήρη ελευθερία να διαλέξω τι είδους δουλειά να κάνω. Διάλεξα να
μεταγράψω τη μουσική σημειογραφία της συλλογής του Parry. Δουλεύω τώρα σε μία
πτέρυγα του πανεπιστημίου της Κολομβίας, στα φωνογραφημένα αρχεία του Herzog.
Ο εξοπλισμός είναι άψογος. Νιώθω σχεδόν σαν να συνεχίζω το έργο μου στην
ουγγρική επιστημονική ακαδημία, σε ελαφρώς διαφοροποιημένες συνθήκες. Όταν
διασχίζω την πανεπιστημιούπολη το βράδυ, νιώθω σαν να διασχίζω την ιστορική
πλατεία μιας ευρωπαϊκής πόλης.27»
Η δημοσίευση των αποτελεσμάτων της έρευνας του Bartόκ καθυστέρησε για αρκετά
χρόνια. Αν και ο πρόλογος του βιβλίου του, Serbo-Croatian Folk Songs, αναφέρει ότι
εκδόθηκε το Φεβρουάριο του 1943, στην πραγματικότητα δεν είχε εκδοθεί μέχρι το
Σεπτέμβρη του195128.
25Antokoletz, Fischer, Suchoff,2000
26Stevens,1993
27Demény,1971
28 Stevens,1993
20
Ο Bartόκ λαμβάνοντας υπόψη του το γεγονός ότι αυτή η μουσική διαδιδόταν
προφορικά, υποστήριζε ότι το δυτικό σημειογραφικό σύστημα ήταν ανεπαρκές για να
καταγραφεί αυτή η μουσική και υποδείκνυε ότι πρέπει να δημιουργηθούν «οπτικές
εντυπώσεις με συμβατικά σύμβολα δραστικής απλότητας» προκειμένου να μελετηθεί
το ηχητικό φαινόμενο. Μόνο το τονικό ύψος και ο ρυθμός μπορεί να σημειωθεί. Η
ένταση και ο χρωματισμός μπορούν να παραλειφθούν. Ευτυχώς, η ένταση δεν είναι
ένας σημαντικός παράγοντας για την μουσική της ανατολικής Ευρώπης. Αναφέρει
χαρακτηριστικά : «Σκοπός του εκτελεστή είναι να επιτύχει ομαλότητα. Πολύ σπάνια
ακούμε νότες τονισμένες από πρόθεση ή ομάδες από νότες να παράγονται με αλλαγές
των δυναμικών.»
Όσον αφορά τις κλίμακες, ο Bartόκ παρατήρησε ότι η πλειοψηφία των μελωδιών των
ηρωικών έπων έχουν μικρή τονική έκταση, αποτελούνται δηλαδή από τεμάχια
κλιμάκων από τέσσερις ή πέντε τόνους, τα οποία πιθανότατα να προέρχονται από
κάποιο αρχαίο σλαβικό στυλ.
Πιο σημαντική όμως είναι η σχέση μεταξύ της τονικής έκτασης και της καταληκτικής
νότας. Το 1926, ο Bartόκ παρατήρησε ότι ένα από τα κυριότερα χαρακτηριστικά της
σέρβικης μουσικής είναι η τονική έκταση ενός μείζονος εξαχόρδου, όπου η πρώτη,
τρίτη και η πέμπτη νότα αντιπροσωπεύουν τις κύριες βαθμίδες και η δεύτερη
βαθμίδα χρησιμοποιείται ως την “tonus finalis”. Στο βιβλίο του Yugoslavian Folk
Music29 , επεκτείνει αυτή την παρατήρηση, λέγοντας ότι: «ορισμένες βαθμίδες ,
κυρίως η δεύτερη και η τρίτη είναι αντικείμενα μεγάλης διακύμανσης σε τέτοιο
βαθμό που κάποιες φορές είναι αδύνατο να καθοριστεί αν η κλίμακα είναι ελάσσονα
ή μείζονα. Οι ουδέτερες βαθμίδες είναι άφθονες. Βρίσκουμε συχνά ομάδες που
αντιπροσωπεύουν τρεις ή τέσσερις κλίμακες.»
Ανακάλυψε επίσης ότι κάποιες κλίμακες περιέχουν το διάστημα της δευτέρας
αυξημένης, το οποίο μπορεί να εμφανιστεί μεταξύ της δεύτερης και της τρίτης
βαθμίδας (λα ύφεση- σι αναίρεση) ή μεταξύ τρίτης και τέταρτης βαθμίδας (σι ύφεση-
ντο δίεση). Ο Bartόκ υποστηρίζει ότι αυτά τα διαστήματα ίσως είναι σημάδια
αραβικής επιρροής, μέσω τουρκικής μεσολάβησης. Όσον αφορά τις χρωματικές
αλλαγές που επηρεάζουν τη δεύτερη και την τρίτη βαθμίδα, μπορεί να εμφανίζονται
σα φυσικές ή ελαττωμένες στην ίδια μελωδία. Οι δύο αυτές φόρμες, δεν είναι
αλληλένδετες, δεν είναι μία χρωματική ποικιλία όπως στη δυτική μουσική.
Στις γραπτές αναφορές του για τα επικά τραγούδια, ο Bartόκ υποστηρίζει τα
ευρήματα του γλωσσολόγου Roman Jakobson για τις ρυθμικές ιδιότητες των
σερβοκροατικών δεκασύλλαβων επικών στροφών, αλλά με τροποποιήσεις που
επιτρέπουν ρυθμικές παρεκκλίσεις. Η δομή της στροφής παραβλέπει εντελώς την
φυσική διάρκεια των συλλαβών, αλλά συγκεκριμένες στροφές των ηρωικών
ποιημάτων τραγουδισμένα σε τέμπο parlando-rubato επιτρέπουν «στομφώδη»
29Bartόκ,1951
21
τονισμό, δείχνοντας τον τρόπο, με τον οποίο η μελωδία προσαρμόζεται στο ρυθμό
και την κλίση της γλώσσας.
Μεγάλα διηγήματα των Σλάβων παρουσιάζονταν μέχρι πρόσφατα με δύο
διαφορετικά όργανα: το gusle και τον ταμπουρά. Ηχογράφησε τα τραγούδια με το
όργανο gusle, και οι μεταγραφές του είναι συνοπτικές. Αυτό το έκανε επειδή
μετέγραψε μόνο τις μελωδίες που είχαν κάποια διαφοροποίηση ή παραλλαγή. Τις
υπόλοιπες τις συνταύτισε σαν όμοιες με τον έναν ή με τον άλλο μελωδικό τύπο.
Το gusle, ένα μονόχορδο όργανο με δοξάρι, παίζεται από τον τραγουδιστή κατά τη
διάρκεια ολόκληρης της απαγγελίας του. Πρελούδια και μικρά συνδετικά περάσματα
μεταξύ των στροφών παρουσιάζονται παίζοντας μόνο το όργανο αυτό καθώς και
κατά τη διάρκεια του τραγουδιού, το gusle ενισχύει τη μελωδία με ταυτοφωνία ή με
μικρές ετεροφωνικές παρεκκλίσεις. Τα σημεία που το όργανο παίζει σόλο είναι
αυτοσχεδιαστικά με περάσματα που είναι χαρακτηριστικά του οργάνου.''

Bartόκ Β., Serbo-Croatian Folk Song, Columbia University Press, New York,
1951
Bartόκ B., Béla Bartόκʼ s Essays, University of Nebraska Press, London, 1992

Ο Béla Bartόκ ως εθνομουσικολόγος
dspace.lib.uom.gr/bitstream/2159/.../1/KentempozidouPE2008.pdf

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Homer.

Greek poet. He is thought to have lived during the 8th century BCE, in various coastal cities of Ionia.

1. Homer and music.

The two great epic poems ascribed to Homer clearly indicate that some kind of singing originally constituted their normal method of performance. Throughout the entire classical period from at least the time of Hesiod onwards, the Homeric poems themselves were recited, not sung. Their vocabulary includes neither kithara nor lyra; to designate the massive four-stringed lyre shown in early vase paintings, the term phorminx is regularly used. Auloi, which are mentioned only twice (Iliad, x.13; xviii.495), had apparently not yet become accepted on the Greek mainland.

The role given to music in the Iliad is very different from that given in the companion poem, the Odyssey. Performers and audiences are quite simply absent: professionalism has either not yet appeared or not been allowed a place within the epic. The term aoidos, used frequently throughout the Odyssey as ʽbardʼ, occurs rarely in the Iliad (see Aoidos). There it clearly means ʽsingerʼ, with the specific sense of ʽmournerʼ. In every case, the characters of the Iliad make their own music. Thus when Odysseus and the other envoys come to Achillesʼ tent, they find him singing to his own lyre accompaniment (ix.186–9). Since the musical activity of the Iliad is normally communal, his behaviour on this occasion may reflect his profound sense of alienation. In its musical significance, one of the most important passages in the Iliad is the description of the ʽShield of Achillesʼ (xviii.478–607), fashioned by Hephaestus at Thetisʼs request for her son, Achilles. On the shield were depicted the singing of a hymenaios, a solo singer with a dancing chorus, other types of dances, and musical instruments such as the aulos and phorminx. This section of the Iliad provided the model for the Hesiodic ʽShield of Heraclesʼ (see Hesiod).

The Odyssey, by contrast, may be called the bardʼs poem. Now the singer of tales appears as a specialist; the term dēmioergos marks him as such, setting him apart. He is an awesome figure, to be treated with deference. Still, he has become a professional, and now a theme for singing may be suggested by his hearers or even objected to – an unthinkable occurrence within the Iliadʼs world of musical values. The bard nevertheless is very generally held in honour; the epithet theios (ʽgod-likeʼ) regularly attaches to him. He himself maintains that he has learnt his art from no mortal teacher; he is self-taught and performs under divine inspiration (xxii.347–8). Listeners may be so profoundly moved by his powers that they reveal their secret feelings, as Odysseus does when he hears the bard Demodocus (viii.84–92). The affective force of vocal music in other contexts always receives recognition from Homer; his Sirens employ song as a fatal lure; the enchantress Circe is a singer. Finally, there is the poetʼs awareness (e.g. in Iliad, ix.186; Odyssey, viii.580) that through the fame of sung words men may live on after death.

Warren Anderson/Thomas J. Mathiesen

2. Later treatments.

The characters of the Iliad form the staple of Greek tragedy, and Aeschylus is said to have described his own plays as ʽslices from the great banquet of Homerʼ. The Iliad, however, dealing with the end of the Trojan War, has proved less attractive to musicians than the Odyssey, which treats of the return to Ithaca of Odysseus (Ulysses). The most ambitious project to involve both epics has been August Bungert's plan for nine Homerische Welt operas, five concerning the Iliad and four the Odyssey. Only Achilleus and Klytämnestra were completed for the former set; the latter became Die Odyssee (1898–1903), comprising the separate Kirke, Nausikaa, Odysseus' Heimkehr, Odysseus' Tod. More modest have been the Homerische Symphonie of Lodewijk Mortelmans (1896–8) and a dance opera of the same title by Theodor Berger (1948).

Further operas inspired by the Iliad include José Nebra's Antes que celos … y Aquiles en Troya (1747), the Penthesilea by Schoeck (1927) and King Priam of Tippett (1962). Concert works derived from the Iliad have been Bruch's choral Achilleus (1885), an overture Hector and Andromache by Henry Hadley (1894), no.1 (ʽHector's Farewell to Andromacheʼ) and no.4 (ʽAchilles Goes forth to Battleʼ) of Morning Heroes by Bliss (1930), and The Iliad of Dimitrios Levidis (1942–3) for narrator, tenor and orchestra.

The Odyssey, with the faithful Penelope at its core, and the wondrous adventures befalling the hero and his son Telemachus, has provided the basis for many operas. Among them are Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640), Il ritorno d'Ulisse of Jacopo Melani (1669), Circe and Penelope by Reinhard Keiser (1696, first and second parts of an Odysseus opera), the Ulysse of J.-F. Rebel (1703), Galuppi's Penelope (1741), Telemaco by Gluck (1765), L'isola di Calipso (1775) and Gli errori di Telemaco (1776) of Gazzaniga, Paer's Circe (1792), the Pénélope of Fauré (1913), The Return of Odysseus by Gundry (1940), an Odysseus by Hermann Reutter (1942), Circe of Egk (1948, revised as 17 Tage und 4 Minuten, 1966), and Ulysses by Michaelides (1951), who also wrote a Nausicaa ballet (1950).

Among concert works inspired by the Odyssey are the Syrens' Song to Ulysses by Benjamin Cooke (c1784), Bruch's choral work Odysseus (1872), an Odysseus symphony of Herzogenberg (1876), Zandonai's choral Il ritorno di Odisseo (1900–01), the prelude-cantata Iz Gomera (ʽFrom Homerʼ) by Rimsky-Korsakov (1901), Guido Guerrini's symphonic poem L'ultimo viaggio d'Odisseo (1921), the choral triptyque Ulysse et les Sirènes by Roger-Ducasse (1937), the Odysseus choral symphony of Armstrong Gibbs (1937–8), Jean Louël's cantata De vaart van Ulysses (1943), Impressions from the Odyssey for violin and piano by Frederick Jacobi (1945), and the epic symphony Ulysses and Nausicaa by Loris Margaritis.

Robert Anderson

Bibliography

H. Guhrauer: Musikgeschichtliches aus Homer (Lauban, 1886)

W. Leaf, ed.: The Iliad (London and New York, 1886–8, 2/1900–02/R)

C.M. Bowra: Tradition and Design in the Iliad (Oxford, 1930/R)

W.B. Stanford, ed.: The Odyssey of Homer (London and New York, 1947–8, 2/1958–9/R)

H.L. Lorimer: Homer and the Monuments (London, 1950)

G.S. Kirk: The Songs of Homer (Cambridge, 1962)

A.J.B. Wace and F.H. Stubbings, eds.: A Companion to Homer (Cambridge, 1963)

M. Wegner: Musik und Tanz (Göttingen, 1968)

C.M. Bowra: Homer (New York, 1972)

J.M. Snyder: ʽThe Web of Song: Weaving Imagery in Homer and the Lyric Poetsʼ, Classical Journal, lxxvi (1981), 193–6

M.L. West: ʽThe Singing of Homer and the Modes of Early Greek Musicʼ, Journal of Hellenic Studies, ci (1981), 113–29

A. Barker, ed.: Greek Musical Writings, i: The Musician and his Art (Cambridge, 1984), 18–32 [translated excerpts referring to musical subjects]

G. Danek: ʽ“Singing Homer”: Überlegungen zu Sprechintonation und Epengesangʼ, Wiener humanistische Blätter, xxxi (1989), 1–15

W.D. Anderson: Music and Musicians in Ancient Greece (Ithaca, NY, 1994), 27–57

For further bibliography see Greece, §I

Grove

~~~~~~~~~~~

Homeric hymns.

Poems addressed to various Greek deities, employing Homeric diction and composed in dactylic hexameter for solo recitation. The corpus of 33 poems, compiled at an unknown date and mistakenly ascribed to Homer, contains four long hymns ranging in length from 293 to 724 verses and dating from about 650 to 400 bce. The other 29 hymns are much shorter and were written somewhat later. Since the ancient sources refer to the hymns as prooimia (preludes) and several of the pieces contain a promise to sing another song, it has been suggested that the hymns once served as introductions to longer epic poems. But this opinion has been contested, especially in the case of the four long hymns. Little is known about the circumstances of performance, although the poems were probably recited in poetic competition at religious festivals. Thucydides (iii.104) describes the festival of Apollo at Delos, including two quotations from the hymn To Apollo. Most of the hymns consist merely of invocation and praise of their addressees, but the longer hymns are narrative and relate a myth central to the godʼs identity. The hymn To Hermes tells of the birth of Hermes, his invention of the lyre and his presentation of this newly crafted instrument to Apollo, with whom it was afterwards associated. Several of the hymns also contain references to the social and religious uses of music in the Archaic and classical Greek world.

Bibliography

T.W. Allen, W.R. Halliday and E.E. Sikes, eds.: The Homeric Hymns (Oxford, 1904, 2/1936/R)

A. Barker, ed.: Greek Musical Writings, i: The Musician and his Art (Cambridge, 1984), 38–46

G.S. Kirk: ʽThe Homeric Hymnsʼ, Greek Literature, ed. P.E. Easterling and B.M.W. Knox (Cambridge, 1985), 110–16

T.J. Mathiesen: Apolloʼs Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Lincoln, NE, 1999)

Michael W. Lundell

Grove

~~~~~~

•Homer, Iliad
Showing 1 - 1 of 1 document results in Greek.

Homer, Iliad Less
(Greek) (English, ed. Samuel Butler) (English)

book 10, card 1: ... θαύμαζεν πυρὰ πολλὰ τὰ καίετο Ἰλιόθι πρὸ αὐλῶν συρίγγων τ᾽ ἐνοπὴν ὅμαδόν τ᾽ ἀνθρώπων. αὐτὰρ ὅτ᾽ ἐς
book 10, card 1: ... θαύμαζεν πυρὰ πολλὰ τὰ καίετο Ἰλιόθι πρὸ αὐλῶν συρίγγων τ᾽ ἐνοπὴν ὅμαδόν τ᾽ ἀνθρώπων. αὐτὰρ ὅτ᾽ ἐς
book 18, card 490: ... δὲ τάχα προγένοντο, δύω δ᾽ ἅμ᾽ ἕποντο νομῆες τερπόμενοι σύριγξι: δόλον δ᾽ οὔ τι προνόησαν.
book 19, card 387: ἐκ δ᾽ ἄρα σύριγγος πατρώϊον ἐσπάσατ᾽ ἔγχος βριθὺ μέγα στιβαρόν: τὸ μὲν

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper...:text:1999.01.0133&expand=lemma&sort=docorder

~~~~~~

•Homeric Hymns (ed. Hugh G. Evelyn-White)
Showing 1 - 1 of 1 document results in Greek.

Hymn 4 to Hermes (ed. Hugh G. Evelyn-White)
(Greek) (English, ed. Hugh G. Evelyn-White)

hymn 4, card 488: ... ἐπωλένιον κιθάριζεν: αὐτὸς δ᾽ αὖθ᾽ ἑτέρης σοφίης ἐκμάσσατο τέχνην: συρίγγων ἐνοπὴν ποιήσατο τηλόθ᾽ ἀκουστήν.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper...:text:1999.01.0137&expand=lemma&sort=docorder
 
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Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
Αιόλιος νόμος

Ps. Plut. Mus. 4

οἱ δὲ νόμοι οἱ κατὰ τούτους, ἀγαθὲ Ὀνησίκρατες, αὐλῳδικοὶ ἦσαν, Ἀπόθετος, Ἔλεγοι, Κωμάρχιος, Σχοινίων, Κηπίων τε καὶ Δεῖος καὶ Τριμελής: ὑστέρῳ δὲ χρόνῳ καὶ τὰ Πολυμνάστια καλούμενα ἐξευρέθη. οἱ δὲ τῆς κιθαρῳδίας νόμοι πρότερον πολλῷ χρόνῳ τῶν αὐλῳδικῶν [p. 491] κατεστάθησαν ἐπὶ Τερπάνδρου: ἐκεῖνος γοῦν τοὺς κιθαρῳδικοὺς πρότερος ὠνόμασε, Βοιώτιόν τινα καὶ Αἰόλιον Τροχαῖόν τε καὶ Ὀξὺν Κηπίωνά τε καὶ Τερπάνδρειον καλῶν, ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ Τετραοίδιον. πεποίηται δὲ τῷ Τερπάνδρῳ καὶ προοίμια κιθαρῳδικὰ ἐν ἔπεσιν. ὅτι δ᾽ οἱ κιθαρῳδικοὶ νόμοι οἱ πάλαι ἐξ ἐπῶν συνίσταντο, Τιμόθεος ἐδήλωσε τοὺς γοῦν πρώτους νόμους ἐν ἔπεσι διαμιγνύων διθυραμβικὴν λέξιν ᾖδεν, ὅπως; μὴ εὐθὺς φανῇ παρανομῶν εἰς τὴν ἀρχαίαν μουσικήν. ἔοικε δὲ κατὰ τὴν τέχνην τὴν κιθαρῳδικὴν ὁ Τέρπανδρος διενηνοχέναι: τὰ Πύθια γὰρ τετράκις ἑξῆς νενικηκὼς ἀναγέγραπται. καὶ τοῖς χρόνοις δὲ σφόδρα παλαιός ἐστι: πρεσβύτερον γοῦν αὐτὸν Ἀρχιλόχου ἀποφαίνει Γλαῦκος ὁ ἐξ Ἰταλίας ἐν συγγράμματί τινι τῷ Περὶ τῶν ἀρχαίων ποιητῶν τε καὶ μουσικῶν φησὶ γὰρ αὐτὸν δεύτερον γενέσθαι μετὰ τοὺς πρώτους ποιήσαντας αὐλῳδίαν

Plutarch. Moralia. Gregorius N. Bernardakis. Leipzig. Teubner. 1895. 6.

(οι κιθαρωδικοί νόμοι καθιερώθηκαν πολλά χρόνια πριν από τους αυλωδικούς, κατά την εποχή του Τερπάνδρου· εκείνος πρώτος ονόμασε τους κιθαρωδικούς νόμους, κάποιον βοιωτικό και [άλλον] αιολικό...)
 

Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
Αιολόφωνος

Νόννο (Διον. 40, 223) συναντούμε το αιολόμολπος με την έννοια περίπου του αιολόφωνος· εκείνος που μέλπει, τραγουδάει ποικιλόμορφα· "Μυγδονίς αιολόμολπος (απέκτυπε αίλινα) σύριγξ" (η Μυγδονίδα σύριγγα με την ποικιλόχρωμη φωνή [τραγούδησε το μοιρολόι τους]).

Nonn. D. 40

καὶ γελόων Διόνυσος ἐπάλλετο χάρματι νίκης,
ἀμπνεύσας δὲ πόνοιο καὶ αἱματόεντος ἀγῶνος
220πρῶτα μὲν ἐκτερέιξεν ἀτυμβεύτων στίχα νεκρῶν,
δωμήσας ἕνα τύμβον ἀπείριτον εὐρέι κόλπῳ
ἄκριτον ἀμφὶ πυρὴν ἑκατόμπεδον: ἀμφὶ δὲ νεκροῖς
Μυγδονὶς αἰολόμολπος ἐπέκτυπεν αἴλινα σύριγξ,
καὶ Φρύγες αὐλητῆρες ἀνέπλεκον ἄρσενα μολπὴν [p. 170]
225πενθαλέοις στομάτεσσιν, ἐπωρχήσαντο δὲ Βάκχαι
ἁβρὰ μελιζομένοιο Γανύκτορος Εὐάδι φωνῇ:
καὶ Κλεόχου Βερέκυντες ὑπὸ στόμα δίζυγες αὐλοὶ
φρικτὸν ἐμυκήσαντο Λίβυν γόον, ὃν πάρος ἄμφω
Σθεννώ τ᾽ Εὐρυάλη τε μιῇ πολυδειράδι φωνῇ
230ἀρτιτόμῳ ῥοιζηδὸν ἐπεκλαύσαντο Μεδούσῃ
φθεγγομένων κεφαλῇσι διηκοσίῃσι δρακόντων,
ὧν ἄπο μυρομένων σκολιὸν σύριγμα κομάων
θρῆνον πουλυκάρηνον ἐφημίξαντο Μεδούσης.

Nonnus of Panopolis. Dionysiaca, 3 Vols. W.H.D. Rouse. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1940-1942.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2008.01.0485:book=40
 

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Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
Αμοιβαίον

Α. Δ. Σκιαδά
Αριστοτέλης ("Περί ποιητικής" 12, 1452b 18)
"λυρικό αμοιβαίον"
"ημιλυρικό" (ή "επιρρηματικόν"
"Ικέτιδες" 825-865 / 866-910
"λυρικό-ημιλυρικό αμοιβαίον"
"Χοηφόροι" 306-478, ή "Ανδρομάχη" 501-544

[PDF]
ΔΙΘΥΡΑΜΒΟΣ ΤΡΑΓΩΔΙΑ
www.britsos.gr/admin/uploads/dithyramvos kai tragodia.pdf

αρχαία τραγούδια που κρατούν τον αρχαϊκότερο λαϊκό τους τύπο : στα τραγούδια ..... Κι ανακαινιστή τής διθυραμβικής μουσικής, κ' εγκατασταίνεται στην Αθήνα τον .... διάλογος «αμοιβαίου» θρήνου Χορού και Εξάρχοντος μπορεί να βρίσκεται, ...


https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&...DzKa1C&sig=AHIEtbSyTkoI5rCQs5-kUMlhoOKYJTKlLw
 

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Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
ἄλυρος without the lyre, unaccompanied by it,
LSJ
ἄλυρος adj sg masc nom
ἄλυρος adj sg fem nom


ἄλυ^ρος , ον,
A. without the lyre, unaccompanied by it, ὕμνοι ἄ., i.e. wild dirges (accompanied by flute, not lyre), E.Alc.447; “ἄ. ἔλεγος” Hel. 185; μέλος Poet. ap. Arist.Rh.1408a7; Ἄϊδος μοῖρ᾽ ἄ., of death, S.OC 1223 (lyr.); ἄ. φθόγγοι sad talk, Alexis 162.6 (anap.); “ἄ. μαθήματα ποιητῶν” Pl.Lg.810b.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=άλυρος&la=greek#lexicon


Ath. 2.44
Φαινίας δ᾽ ἐν τοῖς περὶ φυτῶν φησι: ‘ τραγήματος ἔχει χώραν ἁπαλὰ μὲν ὦχρος, κύαμος, ἐρέβινθος, ξηρὰ δὲ ἑφθὰ καὶ φρυκτὰ σχεδὸν τὰ πλεῖστα.’ Ἄλεξις:

ἔστιν ἀνήρ μοι πτωχὸς κἀγὼ
γραῦς καὶ θυγάτηρ καὶ παῖς υἱὸς
χἤδ᾽ ἡ χρηστή, πένθ᾽ οἱ πάντες,
τούτων οἱ τρεῖς δειπνοῦμεν,
δύο δ᾽ αὐτοῖς συγκοινωνοῦμεν μάζης μικρᾶς. φθόγγους δ᾽ ἀλύρους
θρηνοῦμεν ἐπὰν μηδὲν ἔχωμεν
χρῶμα δ᾽ ἀσίτων ἡμῶν ὄντων
γίνεται ὠχρόν. τὰ μέρη δ᾽ ἡμῶν
χἠ σύνταξις τοῦ βίου ἐστὶν
κύαμος, θέρμος, λάχανον, ...
γογγυλίς, ὦχρος, λάθυρος, φηγός,
βολβός, τέττιξ, ἐρέβινθος, ἀχράς,
τό τε θειοφανὲς μητρῷον ἐμοὶ
μελέδημ᾽ ἰσχάς,
Φρυγίας εὑρήματα συκῆς.

Athenaeus. The Deipnosophists. with an English Translation by. Charles Burton Gulick. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1927. 1.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper...:text:2008.01.0405&expand=lemma&sort=docorder


Plat. Laws 7.810b

[810β] μάνθανε. γράμματα μὲν τοίνυν χρὴ τὸ μέχρι τοῦ γράψαι τε καὶ ἀναγνῶναι δυνατὸν εἶναι διαπονεῖν: πρὸς τάχος δὲ ἢ κάλλος ἀπηκριβῶσθαί τισιν, οἷς μὴ φύσις ἐπέσπευσεν ἐν τοῖς τεταγμένοις ἔτεσιν, χαίρειν ἐᾶν. πρὸς δὲ δὴ μαθήματα ἄλυρα ποιητῶν κείμενα ἐν γράμμασι, τοῖς μὲν μετὰ μέτρων, τοῖς δ᾽ ἄνευ ῥυθμῶν τμημάτων, ἃ δὴ συγγράμματα κατὰ λόγον εἰρημένα μόνον, τητώμενα ῥυθμοῦ τε καὶ ἁρμονίας, σφαλερὰ [810ξ] γράμμαθ᾽ ἡμῖν ἐστιν παρά τινων τῶν πολλῶν τοιούτων ἀνθρώπων καταλελειμμένα: οἷς, ὦ πάντων βέλτιστοι νομοφύλακες, τί χρήσεσθε; ἢ τί ποθ᾽ ὑμῖν ὁ νομοθέτης χρῆσθαι προστάξας ὀρθῶς ἂν τάξειε; καὶ μάλα ἀπορήσειν αὐτὸν προσδοκῶ.

Plato. Platonis Opera, ed. John Burnet. Oxford University Press. 1903.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper...01.0165:book=7:section=810b&highlight=a)/lura

Aristot. Rh. 3.6

6.
εἰς ὄγκον δὲ τῆς λέξεως συμβάλλεται τάδε, τὸ λόγῳ χρῆσθαι ἀντ᾽ ὀνόματος, οἷον μὴ κύκλον, ἀλλ᾽ ἐπίπεδον τὸ ἐκ τοῦ μέσου ἴσον: εἰς δὲ συντομίαν τὸ ἐναντίον, ἀντὶ τοῦ λόγου ὄνομα. [2] καὶ ἐὰν αἰσχρὸν ἢ ἀπρεπές, ἐὰν μὲν ἐν τῷ
λόγῳ ᾖ τὸ αἰσχρόν, τοὔνομα λέγειν, ἐὰν δ᾽ ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι, τὸν λόγον. [3] καὶ μεταφορᾷ δηλοῦν καὶ τοῖς ἐπιθέτοις, εὐλαβούμενον τὸ ποιητικόν. [4] καὶ τὸ ἓν πολλὰ ποιεῖν, ὅπερ οἱ ποιηταὶ ποιοῦσιν: ἑνὸς ὄντος λιμένος ὅμως λέγουσι “λιμένας εἰς Ἀχαϊκούς


καὶ “δέλτου μὲν αἵδε πολύθυροι διαπτυχαί.

” Eur. IT 727 [5] καὶ μὴ ἐπιζευγνύναι, ἀλλ᾽ ἑκατέρῳ ἑκάτερον, “τῆς γυναικὸς τῆς ἡμετέρας”: ἐὰν δὲ συντόμως, τοὐναντίον, “τῆς ἡμετέρας γυναικός”. [6] καὶ μετὰ συνδέσμου λέγειν: ἐὰν δὲ συντόμως, ἄνευ μὲν συνδέσμου, μὴ ἀσύνδετα δέ,
οἷον “πορευθεὶς καὶ διαλεχθείς”, “πορευθεὶς διελέχθην”. [7] καὶ τὸ Ἀντιμάχου χρήσιμον, ἐξ ὧν μὴ ἔχει λέγειν, ὃ ἐκεῖνος ποιεῖ ἐπὶ τοῦ Τευμησσοῦ, “ἔστι τις ἠνεμόεις ὀλίγος λόφος:

” αὔξεται γὰρ οὕτως εἰς ἄπειρον. ἔστι δὲ τοῦτο καὶ ἐπὶ
ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν, ὅπως οὐκ ἔχει, ὁποτέρως ἂν ᾖ χρήσιμον, ὅθεν καὶ τὰ ὀνόματα οἱ ποιηταὶ φέρουσιν, τὸ ἄχορδον καὶ τὸ ἄλυρον μέλος: ἐκ τῶν στερήσεων γὰρ ἐπιφέρουσιν: εὐδοκιμεῖ γὰρ τοῦτο ἐν ταῖς μεταφοραῖς λεγόμενον ταῖς ἀνάλογον, οἷον τὸ φάναι τὴν σάλπιγγα ἱέναι μέλος ἄλυρον.

Ars Rhetorica. Aristotle. W. D. Ross. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1959.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper...9.01.0059:book=3:chapter=6&highlight=a)/luron

Soph. OC 1211

Χορός

ὅστις τοῦ πλέονος μέρους χρῄζει τοῦ μετρίου παρεὶς
ζώειν, σκαιοσύναν φυλάσσων
ἐν ἐμοὶ κατάδηλος ἔσται.
1215ἐπεὶ πολλὰ μὲν αἱ μακραὶ ἁμέραι κατέθεντο δὴ
λύπας ἐγγυτέρω, τὰ τέρποντα δ᾽ οὐκ ἂν ἴδοις ὅπου,
ὅταν τις ἐς πλέον πέσῃ
1220τοῦ δέοντος: ὁ δ᾽ ἐπίκουρος ἰσοτέλεστος,
Ἄϊδος ὅτε μοῖρ᾽ ἀνυμέναιος
ἄλυρος ἄχορος ἀναπέφηνε,
θάνατος ἐς τελευτάν.

Sophocles. The Oedipus at Colonus of Sophocles. Edited with introduction and notes by Sir Richard Jebb. Sir Richard Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1889.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0189:card=1211&highlight=a)/luros

Eur. Hel. 179

Χορός

κυανοειδὲς ἀμφ᾽ ὕδωρ
180ἔτυχον ἕλικά τ᾽ ἀνὰ χλόαν
φοίνικας ἁλίου πέπλους
αὐγαῖσιν ἐν χρυσέαις
ἀμφὶ δόνακος ἔρνεσιν
θάλπουσα: ποτνίας δ᾽ ἐμᾶς,
ἔνθεν οἰκτρὸν ἀνεβόασεν,
185ὅμαδον ἔκλυον, ἄλυρον ἔλεγον,
ὅτι ποτ᾽ ἔλακεν αἰάγμα
σι στένουσα, Νύμφα τις
οἷα Ναῒς
ὄρεσι φυγάδα νόμον ἱεῖσα
γοερόν, ὑπὸ δὲ πέτρινα γύαλα
κλαγγαῖσι
190Πανὸς ἀναβοᾷ γάμους.

Euripides. Euripidis Fabulae, ed. Gilbert Murray, vol. 3. Oxford. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 1913.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0099:card=179&highlight=a)/luron

Eur. Phoen. 1019

Χορός

ἔβας ἔβας,
ὦ πτεροῦσσα, γᾶς λόχευμα
1020νερτέρου τ᾽ Ἐχίδνας,
Καδμείων ἁρπαγά,
πολύφθορος πολύστονος
μειξοπάρθενος,
δάιον τέρας,
φοιτάσι πτεροῖς
1025χαλαῖσί τ᾽ ὠμοσίτοις:
Διρκαίων ἅ ποτ᾽ ἐκ
τόπων νέους πεδαίρουσ᾽
ἄλυρον ἀμφὶ μοῦσαν
ὀλομέναν τ᾽ Ἐρινὺν
1030ἔφερες ἔφερες ἄχεα πατρίδι
φόνια: φόνιος ἐκ θεῶν
ὃς τάδ᾽ ἦν ὁ πράξας.
ἰάλεμοι δὲ ματέρων,
ἰάλεμοι δὲ παρθένων
1035ἐστέναζον οἴκοις:
ἰηιήιον βοάν,
ἰηιήιον μέλος,
ἄλλος ἄλλ᾽ ἐπωτότυζε
διαδοχαῖς ἀνὰ πτόλιν.
βροντᾷ δὲ στεναγμὸς
1040ἀχά τ᾽ ἦν ὅμοιος,
ὁπότε πόλεος ἀφανίσειεν
ἁ πτεροῦσσα παρθένος τιν᾽ ἀνδρῶν.

Euripides. Euripidis Fabulae, ed. Gilbert Murray, vol. 3. Oxford. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 1913.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0117:card=1019&highlight=a)/luron


Eur. IT 143

Ἰφιγένεια

ἰὼ δμωαί,
δυσθρηνήτοις ὡς θρήνοις
145ἔγκειμαι, τᾶς οὐκ εὐμούσου
μολπᾶς βοὰν ἀλύροις ἐλέγοις, αἰαῖ,
αἰαῖ, κηδείοις οἴκτοισιν:
αἵ μοι συμβαίνουσ᾽ ἆται,
σύγγονον ἁμὸν κατακλαιομένα
150ζωᾶς, οἵαν οἵαν ἰδόμαν
ὄψιν ὀνείρων
νυκτός, τᾶς ἐξῆλθ᾽ ὄρφνα.
ὀλόμαν ὀλόμαν:
οὐκ εἴσ᾽ οἶκοι πατρῷοι:
οἴμοι μοι φροῦδος γέννα.
155φεῦ φεῦ τῶν Ἄργει μόχθων.
ἰὼ δαῖμον,
μόνον ὅς με κασίγνητον συλᾷς
Ἀίδᾳ πέμψας, ᾧ τάσδε χοὰς
160μέλλω κρατῆρά τε τὸν φθιμένων
ὑδραίνειν γαίας ἐν νώτοις
πηγάς τ᾽ οὐρείων ἐκ μόσχων
Βάκχου τ᾽ οἰνηρὰς λοιβὰς
165ξουθᾶν τε πόνημα μελισσᾶν,
ἃ νεκροῖς θελκτήρια κεῖται.
ἀλλ᾽ ἔνδος μοι πάγχρυσον
τεῦχος καὶ λοιβὰν Ἅιδα.
170ὦ κατὰ γαίας Ἀγαμεμνόνιον
θάλος, ὡς φθιμένῳ τάδε σοι πέμπω:
δέξαι δ᾽: οὐ γὰρ πρὸς τύμβον σοι
ξανθὰν χαίταν, οὐ δάκρυ᾽ οἴσω.
175τηλόσε γὰρ δὴ σᾶς ἀπενάσθην
πατρίδος καὶ ἐμᾶς, ἔνθα δοκήμασι
κεῖμαι σφαχθεῖσ᾽ ἁ τλάμων.


Euripides. Euripidis Fabulae, ed. Gilbert Murray, vol. 2. Oxford. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 1913.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0111:card=143&highlight=a)lu/rois


Plut. De Pyth. 23

ὁ δ᾽ Εὐριπίδης 6 εἰπὼν 7 ὡς ‘ἔρως ποιητὴν διδάσκει, κἂν ἄμουσος ᾖ τὸ πρίν’ ἐνενόησεν, 8 ὅτι ποιητικὴν καὶ μουσικὴν Ἔρως δύναμιν οὐκ ἐντίθησιν, ἐνυπάρχουσαν δὲ κινεῖ καὶ ἀναθερμαίνει λανθάνουσαν καὶ ἀργοῦσαν. ἢ μηδένα νῦν ἐρᾶν, ὦ ξένε, λέγωμεν, ἀλλὰ φροῦδον οἴχεσθαι τὸν ἔρωτα, ὅτι μέτροις οὐδεὶς οὐδ᾽ ᾠδαῖς ‘ῥίμφα παιδείους’ 9 ὡς Πίνδαρος ἔφη ‘τοξεύει μελιγάρεας ὕμνους;’ ἀλλ᾽ ἄτοπον: ἔρωτες γὰρ ἔτι 10 πολλοὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων 11 ἐπιστρέφονται, ψυχαῖς δ᾽ 12 ὁμιλοῦντες οὐκ εὐφυῶς οὐδ᾽ ἑτοίμως πρὸς μουσικὴν ἐχούσαις, ἄναυλοι μὲν καὶ ἄλυροι λάλοι δ᾽ οὐδὲν ἧττόν εἰσι καὶ διάπυροι τῶν παλαιῶν: ὅτι 13 οὐδ᾽ ὅσιον 14 εἰπεῖν ἢ καλὸν ὡς ἀνέραστος ἦν ἡ Ἀκαδήμεια 15 καὶ ὁ Σωκράτους καὶ Πλάτωνος; χορός, ὧν λόγοις μὲν ἐρωτικοῖς ἐντυχεῖν ἔστι, ποιήματα δ᾽ οὐκ ἀπολελοίπασι. τί δ᾽ ἀπολείπει τοῦ λέγοντος; ἐρωτικὴν μόνην γεγονέναι Σαπφὼ γυναικῶν ὁ 16 μαντικὴν φάσκων μόνην 17 γεγονέναι Σίβυλλαν καὶ Ἀριστονίκαν καὶ ὅσαι διὰ μέτρων ἐθεμίστευσαν; ‘ὁ μὲν γὰρ οἶνος’ ὡς ἔλεγε Χαιρήμων 18 ‘τοῖς τρόποις κεράννυται τῶν πινόντων’ ὁ δὲ μαντικὸς ἐνθουσιασμός, ὥσπερ ὁ ἐρωτικός, [p. 59] χρῆται τῇ ὑποκειμένῃ δυνάμει καὶ κινεῖ τῶν δεξαμένων ἕκαστον καθ᾽ ὃ πέφυκεν.’

Plutarch. Moralia. Gregorius N. Bernardakis. Leipzig. Teubner. 1891. 3.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2008.01.0246:section=23&highlight=a)/luroi

Eur. Alc. 445

Χορός
445πολλά σε μουσοπόλοι
μέλψουσι καθ᾽ ἑπτάτονόν τ᾽ ὀρείαν
χέλυν ἔν τ᾽ ἀλύροις κλέοντες ὕμνοις,
Σπάρτᾳ κυκλὰς ἁνίκα Καρνεί-
ου περινίσεται ὥρα
450μηνός, ἀειρομένας
παννύχου σελάνας,
λιπαραῖσί τ᾽ ἐν ὀλβίαις Ἀθάναις.
τοίαν ἔλιπες θανοῦσα μολ-
πὰν μελέων ἀοιδοῖς.

Euripides. Euripides, with an English translation by David Kovacs. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. forthcoming.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0087:card=445&highlight=a)lu/rois
 
Last edited:

Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
Ήθος

Ο Πλούταρχος (Περί μουσ. 1140B-C, 26) γράφει: "Είναι φανερό από τα παραπάνω ότι δικαιολογημένα οι παλαιοί Έλληνες έδιδαν τη μεγαλύτερη προσοχή τους στη μουσική εκπαίδευση. Γιατί πίστευαν ότι έπρεπε να πλάθουν και να ρυθμίζουν τις ψυχές των νέων σε ευπρεπή ηθική με τη μουσική ("...δια μουσικής πλάττειν τε και ρυθμίζειν επί το εύσχημον")· γιατί η μουσική είναι χρήσιμη (ευεργετική) σε κάθε χρόνο και για κάθε ηθική πράξη ("προς πάντα και πάσαν εσπουδασμένην πράξιν")". Ο Πλάτων, για να αναφέρουμε μια από τις αναρίθμητες φιλοσοφικές εκφράσεις του πάνω σε αυτό το θέμα, λέει στον Πρωταγόρα (326Α-Β) ότι οι δάσκαλοι της κιθάρας "...κατορθώνουν να κάμουν τους ρυθμούς και τις αρμονίες οικείες στις ψυχές των παιδιών, ώστε να γίνουν ημερότεροι άνθρωποι και, επειδή γίνονται πιο εύρυθμοι και πιο προσαρμοστικοί, να είναι χρήσιμοι και στο λόγο και στην πράξη. Γιατί όλη η ζωή του ανθρώπου χρειάζεται ευρυθμία και προσαρμοστικότητα" (μτφρ. Β. Ν. Τατάκη, σ. 61). Κατά άλλη μετάφραση: "γιατί όλη η ζωή του ανθρώπου έχει ανάγκη από τις χάρες του ρυθμού και της αρμονίας". Βλ. τα λ. ευάρμοστος, -ία. Και στην Πολιτεία (Γ', μιλά ο Σωκράτης): "Δεν είναι γι' αυτόν το λόγο, αγαπητέ Γλαύκων, που η μουσική εκπαίδευση είναι σημαντικότατη, γιατί ο ρυθμός και η αρμονία εισδύουν βαθιά στα μύχια της ψυχής και ασκούν σ' αυτήν ισχυρότατη επίδραση, φέρνοντας μαζί τους και προσφέροντας ομορφιά, αν κανείς εκπαιδευτεί σωστά, ή το αντίθετο;". Και ο Αριστείδης (Περί μουσ. 65 Mb) προσθέτει: "ούκ έστι πράξις εν ανθρώποις, ήτις άνευ μουσικής τελείται" (δεν υπάρχει ανθρώπινη πράξη, που να γίνεται χωρίς μουσική).
Ι. ΗΘΟΣ ΤΩΝ ΦΘΟΓΓΩΝ ΚΑΙ TOΥ ΥΨΟΥΣ Ο Αριστείδης (ό.π. σ. 13), μιλώντας για τις διαφορές ανάμεσα στους μουσικούς ήχους (βλ. λ. φθόγγος), ορίζει το ήθος ως πέμπτη διαφορά. Το ήθος ποικίλλει ανάλογα με το ύψος των ήχων· "ετέρα γάρ ήθη τοις οξυτέροις, έτερα τοις βαρυτέροις επιτρέχει, και έτερα μεν παρυπατοειδέσιν, έτερα δε λιχανοειδέσιν" (άλλο είναι το ήθος των ψηλότερων φθόγγων και άλλο των χαμηλότερων, και άλλο όταν είναι στην περιοχή της παρυπάτης και άλλο στην περιοχή της λιχανού).
ΙΙ. ΗΘΟΣ TOΥ ΜΕΛΟΥΣ Το ήθος στη μελοποιία διακρίνεται σε τρεις διαφορετικούς τρόπους έκφρασης (πρβ. Κλεον. Εισ. 13): 1. Το διασταλτικόν εκφράζει μεγαλοπρέπεια και ανδροπρεπή διάθεση της ψυχής ("μεγαλοπρέπεια και δίαρμα ψυχής ανδρώδες")· το ήθος αυτό παροτρύνει σε ηρωικές πράξεις και χρησιμοποιείται στην τραγωδία. 2. Το συσταλτικόν, με το οποίο η ψυχή οδηγείται σε ταπεινοσύνη και έλλειψη ανδρικής διάθεσης ("εις ταπεινότητα και άνανδρον διάθεσιν"). Το ήθος αυτό είναι κατάλληλο για ερωτικά αισθήματα, θρήνους, συμπόνια και τα όμοια. 3. Το ησυχαστικόν φέρνει στην ψυχή γαλήνη και ειρήνη. "Είναι κατάλληλο για ύμνους, εγκώμια, συμβουλές και τα όμοια". Ο Αριστείδης (σ. 30), επίσης, διακρίνει τα ίδια τρία είδη ήθους στη μελοποιία, το συσταλτικό, το διασταλτικό και το μέσο (βλ. λ. μελοποιία).
III. ΗΘΟΣ ΤΩΝ ΑΡΜΟΝΙΩΝ Κάθε αρμονία εκφράζει ξεχωριστό ήθος. 1. Το ήθος της δωρικής (ή δωριστί) αρμονίας περιγραφόταν ως ανδροπρεπές και μεγαλοπρεπές (ανδρώδες, μεγαλοπρεπές· Ηρακλ. Ποντ. στον Αθήν. ΙΔ', 624D, 19)· επίσης ως σκοτεινό και ορμητικό ("σκυθρωπόν και σφοδρόν"· ό.π.)· ως ανώτερο (διακεκριμένο) και αξιοπρεπές ("αξιωματικόν, σεμνόν"· Πλούτ. Περί μουσ. 1136D και F, 16 και 17)· ως σταθερότατο και ανδρικό (Αριστοτ. Πολιτ. Η', 7, 10: "περί δε της δωριστί πάντες ομολογούσιν ως στασιμωτάτης ούσης και μάλιστ' ήθος εχούσης ανδρείον"). 2. Το ήθος της υποδωρικής (ή υποδωριστί) αρμονίας (ή παλιάς αιολικής) περιγραφόταν ως περήφανο, πομπώδες και με κάποια έπαρση· επίσης ως υψηλό και σίγουρο (σταθερό) ("γαύρον και ογκώδες, έτι δε και υπόχαυνον", "εξηρμένον και τεθαρρηκός"· Ηρακλ. ό.π.)· βαρύτονο ("βαρύδρομον"· Λάσος στον Αθήν.), ως μεγαλοπρεπές και σταθερό (Αριστοτ. Προβλ. XIX, 48: "η δε υποδωριστί [ήθος έχει] μεγαλοπρεπές και στάσιμον, διό και κιθαρωδικωτάτη εστί των αρμονιών"). 3. Το ήθος της φρυγικής (ή φρυγιστί, ή ιαστί) αρμονίας περιγραφόταν ως εμπνευσμένο (ένθεον· Λουκ. στον Αρμονίδη Ι, 10), ενθουσιαστικό, ακόμη και βίαια ερεθιστικό και συναισθηματικό (Αριστοτ. Πολιτ. Η', 5, 9 και 7, 8, 1340Β και 1342Β: "οργιαστική και παθητική"). Η αρμονία αυτή ήταν κατάλληλη για το διθύραμβο. 4. Το ήθος της υποφρυγικής (ή υποφρυγιστί) αρμονίας ήταν, κατά τον Ηρακλείδη Ποντικό (Αθήν. 625Β, 20), "σκληρό και αυστηρό" και, κατά τον Λουκιανό (Αρμονίδης Ι, 10-12), κομψό (γλαφυρόν). 5. Το ήθος της λυδικής (ή λυδιστί) αρμονίας περιγραφόταν από πολλούς συγγραφείς ως απαλό και ευχάριστο· από τον Πλάτωνα ως "συμποτικόν και μαλακόν" (Πολιτεία Γ'). Ο Αριστοτέλης, από την άλλη (Πολιτ. Η', 7, 11, 1342Β), βρίσκει τη λυδική πιο κατάλληλη από όλες τις αρμονίες για την παιδική ηλικία, γιατί είναι ευπρεπής και μορφωτική ("δια το δύνασθαι κόσμον τ' έχειν και παιδείαν"). 6. Το ήθος της υπολυδικής (ή υπολυδιστί) αρμονίας περιγραφόταν γενικά ως βακχικό, φιλήδονο, μεθυστικό ("βακχικόν, εκλελυμένον, μεθυστικόν"). 7. Το ήθος της μιξολυδικής (ή μιξολυδιστί) αρμονίας περιγραφόταν ως παθητικό (Πλούτ. 1136D, 16)· ως παραπονιάρικο και σταθερό ("οδυρτικωτέρως και συνεστηκότως έχειν"· Αριστοτ. Πολιτ. 1340Β)· και από τον Πλάτωνα ως θρηνητικό ("θρηνώδης"· Πολιτεία Γ', 398Ε).
Βλ. στο λ. χοροδιδάσκαλος το επεισόδιο κατά το οποίο ο Ευριπίδης παρατήρησε αυστηρά ένα μέλος του χορού που κορόιδευε κατά την εξάσκηση του χορού στο μιξολυδικό.
IV. ΗΘΟΣ ΤΩΝ ΓΕΝΩΝ 1. Το ήθος του [[διατονικού</i> γένους]] περιγραφόταν ως φυσικόν, αρρενωπόν και αυστηρόν (Αριστείδης, Ι, 19, ΙΙ, 111 Mb). Επίσης ως "σεμνόν και εύτονον" (Θέων Σμυρν. Περί μουσ. 85, 9) και ως "απλούν τε και γενναίον και φυσικώτερον" (Μ. Ψελλός, σ. 27). 2. Το ήθος του [[χρωματικού</i> γένους]] περιγραφόταν ως γλυκύτατο και πολύ παραπονιάρικο ("ήδιστόν τε και γοερώτατον"· Ανώνυμος Bell. 31, 26· επίσης, Αριστείδ. ΙΙ, 111 Mb) και παθητικόν (Παχυμ. Vincent Notices 428). 3. Το ήθος του [[εναρμόνιου</i> γένους]] ήταν, κατά τον Αριστείδη (ό.π.), "διεγερτικόν και ήπιον"· ο R.P.W.-Ι. διορθώνει το ήπιον σε ηθικόν.
V. ΗΘΟΣ ΤΩΝ ΡΥΘΜΩΝ Ο Αριστείδης (σ. 97 Mb) υποστηρίζει ότι "οι ρυθμοί που αρχίζουν από τη θέση είναι πιο ήσυχοι, γιατί καθησυχάζουν το μυαλό (τη διάνοια), ενώ εκείνοι που αρχίζουν από την άρση είναι ταραγμένοι". Επίσης, ότι οι ρυθμοί που έχουν ίσες αναλογίες ("εν ίσω λόγω τεταγμένοι") είναι πιο ευχάριστοι, ενώ οι ημιολικοί είναι πιο ταραγμένοι. Ο δάκτυλος, με τον μεγαλόπρεπο χαρακτήρα του, ταιριάζει στην επική ποίηση, ενώ ο ανάπαιστος είναι πιο κατάλληλος για τα εμβατήρια· ο τροχαίος, λεπτός και ανάλαφρος, ταιριάζει σε χορευτικές μελωδίες κτλ. Γενικά, μπορεί να ειπωθεί ότι το ήθος, σύμφωνα με πολλούς αρχαίους συγγραφείς και θεωρητικούς της μουσικής, ήταν μια σημαντική δύναμη στη μουσική· τα ανθρώπινα ήθη εξαρτιόνταν από το ήθος της μουσικής. Φιλόσοφοι, κυρίους ο Δάμων, ο Πλάτων και ο Αριστοτέλης, έδιναν ιδιαίτερη έμφαση σε αυτή τη σημασία στα γραφόμενά τους. Κακή μουσική εξασκεί πολύ σοβαρή και καταστρεπτική επίδραση στον ατομικό χαρακτήρα και στην ηθική του λαού. Ο Πλούταρχος (Πώς δει τον νέον ποιημάτων ακούειν, 19F-20A) εκφράζει αυτή τη γνώμη: "Μουσική φαύλη και άσματα πονηρά... ακόλαστα ποιούσιν ήθη και βίους ανάνδρους και ανθρώπους τρυφήν και μαλακίαν και γυναικοκρασίαν" (Φαύλη μουσική και πονηρά τραγούδια... δημιουργούν ήθη ακόλαστα και διεφθαρμένες ζωές, και ανθρώπους που αγαπούν τη μαλθακή ζωή (την καλοπέραση), τη νωθρότητα και την υποταγή στις γυναίκες). Ωστόσο, υπήρξαν, ιδιαίτερα σε νεότερα χρόνια, διαφορετικές απόψεις σχετικά με την ηθική επίδραση της μουσικής, ακόμα και αντίθετες προς τις παραπάνω. Μπορεί να αναφερθεί η "Hibeh" διατριβή πάνω στη μουσική του 5ου/4ου αι. (Hibeh Papyri, 1906· μτφρ. W. Α. Anderson, σσ. 147-149, στο βιβλίο του που αναφέρεται παρακάτω στη βιβλιογραφία) και του Φιλόδημου (ιδιαίτ. βιβλ. Δ', βλ. σσ. 152-176 του Anderson). O Σέξτος Εμπειρικός (περ. 3ος αι. μ.Χ.) είναι ένα άλλο παράδειγμα· στο Προς Μουσικούς βιβλίο του (VI, 19 κέ.) συζητά αυτές τις απόψεις, τις επικρίνει αυστηρά και τις απορρίπτει, και αρνείται μια τέτοια ηθική ή κοινωνική δύναμη στη μουσική. Βιβλιογραφία: Paul Girard, L' education athenienne, Παρίσι 1891. Η. Abert, Die Lehre vom Ethos in der griechischen Musik, Λιψία 1899. L. P. Wilkinson, "Philodemus on Ethos in Music", Classical Quarterly 32, 1938, 174-181. E. A. Lippman, "The Sources and Development of the Ethical View of Music in Ancient Greece", Mus. Quarterly XLIX, 1963. W. D. Anderson, Ethos and Education in Greek Musik, Cambridge, Mass. 1966.
Για επιπλέον βιβλιογραφία βλ. στο λ. μουσική.

Πηγές
Σόλωνας Μιχαηλίδης, Εγκυκλοπαίδεια της αρχαίας ελληνικής μουσικής, Εκδόσεις Μορφωτικού Ιδρύματος Εθνικής Τραπέζης, 1999, ISBN: 960-250-174-Χ

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Ethos.

An ancient Greek musical term, describing a concept important in the relationship between ancient Greek music and education.

1. Meaning of the term.

The term occurs as a noun, ēthos, from Homer onwards. Its original meaning was ‘accustomed place’; Hesiod first used it as ‘custom’. With Heraclitus it acquired the added sense of ‘character’, more precisely ‘moral character’, often regarded as the result of habituation. When the term is used in English transliteration, ‘ethos’, with reference to ancient Greek music, the last-named meaning should be understood. Ethos should be taken as an attribute not merely of persons but also of musical phenomena, which are then considered as vehicles for conveying ethical attitudes, not as having any kind of moral nature in themselves.

Greek ethos theory brings together many aspects of a belief held by various Hellenic authors and by some later figures. These men, among them poets and philosophers of the greatest eminence, expressed in differing ways their belief that music can convey, foster and even generate ethical states. It must be emphasized that to a Hellene the notion of a ‘theory of ethos’ would have had no meaning. The notion of ‘die Lehre vom Ethos’ or ‘die Ethoslehre’ was developed primarily by German scholarship and creates the illusion of a single, continuing pattern of belief. Since the close of the 19th century the erroneousness of a unitary approach has been partly recognized; yet there is still need for an awareness that many differing views, sometimes sharply opposed, made up the shifting pattern of beliefs concerning musical ethos. An examination of some of these views will be undertaken here. The factors that must be considered include ethnic or literary associations, religious considerations and the physical qualities of modes or instruments.

2. Ethos in lyric poetry.

When indications of ethos occur in poetry, they almost always concern mood rather than morality. Writing early in the 7th century BCE the lyric poet Terpander described Sparta as the home of ‘the clear-voiced Muse and Justice’ but made no close connection between the two factors. Several decades later another poet of Sparta, Alcman, made the claim that Apollo played the aulos. This suggests strongly that at the time it was possible for Spartans to credit the instrument with a tranquil mood. Here the contrast with later Athenian opinion is extreme. At the beginning of the 6th century BCE Stesichorus wrote of ‘delicately finding out a Phrygian melody’ to sing of the Graces in springtime. Phrygian modality was closely associated with the aulos throughout the classical period; the fact that Stesichorus presented it as gentle and joyous may support Alcman's statement. Again there is a strong contrast with what was to become the majority opinion, although Plato was willing to ignore the majority. Evidently a given mode or instrument might be credited at different times and places with distinctly different characteristics.

Pitch, resonance and timbre constitute the physical nature of a mode or instrument, considered in terms of experienced sound. Resonance was far more a property of the kithara than of the lyra; the penetrating quality of the aulos was well known. Variation in timbre was so narrowly limited by factors of construction as to be unimportant. Absolute pitch had no place in Greek music; relative pitch and tessitura, however, figured prominently. They are reflected in terms such as ‘intense’ (suntonos), ‘relaxed’ (aneimenos) and ‘slack’ (chalaros). Originally tuning descriptions, these came to be used to differentiate modes. Occasionally they were made to serve the additional (and wholly improper) purpose of conveying an ethical judgment; for writers of comedy, the temptation to make them do this was especially great. When the late 6th-century poet Lasus of hermione called Aeolian a ‘deep-sounding’ (barubromos) mode he may merely have been seeking to describe its relative pitch, perhaps with a suggestion of timbre as well; or the description may actually apply to the deep tones of the long-stringed barbitos used by Aeolic poets. In either case, the dimension of ethos has not yet been added.

To an imperfect but recognizable degree, this addition was made at the beginning of the 5th century BCE by an outspokenly conservative poet, Pratinas of phlius. He counselled using Aeolian as a mean between the modal extremes of ‘tense’ and ‘relaxed’, and called it ‘well suited to all braggarts in song’. Since this mode was never a mean in any technical sense known to us, the reference would appear to concern the Mimesis of character traits. Neither anguished nor serene, it was thought to express the blithe and forthright manner of the Aeolian peoples. They could indeed be ‘braggarts in song’; the great Alcaeus is an example. Pratinas's remarks illustrate the ethnic type of ethos belief; although it reappeared periodically in Greek literature, it was hardly ever put forward seriously by a creative or analytical writer of the first rank. The value of what Pratinas said lies elsewhere. Like Terpander, he made no causal connection between modality and morality. He did, however, see appropriateness in the relationship between a musical mode and a mode of social deportment, which a Greek of the central classical period judged by moral standards.

Somewhat similar conclusions may be suggested concerning a fragmentary statement from the lost Paeans of Pindar, dating probably from the earlier decades of the 5th century BCE; the ‘Dorian melody [melos] is [?the] most dignified’. The scholiast, or late commentator, who quoted the fragment asserted that Pindar was referring to the Dorian mode. The propriety of equating melody with mode gains support from a definition given by Winnington-Ingram (1936, p.3): ‘Mode may be defined as the epitome of stylised song, of song stylised in a particular district or people or occupation’. This was especially true in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE. When Lasus, for example, referred to the Aeolian harmonia, he was probably thinking less of a scale pattern than of a melodic style that had become localized among Greeks who spoke the Aeolic dialect. It is undeniable that, in the present fragment, Pindar described Dorian melody with a term that seems entirely at home in the vocabulary of the later, fully developed doctrines of ethos. Nevertheless, a distinctively ethical valuation of music had not yet appeared. Pindar was concerned here with stateliness, not with the excellence of the soul. Although in the first Pythian ode he praised the power of music with singular exaltation, and although he gave cosmic meaning to the symbolism of lyre and harmonia, his fiercely aristocratic standards of honour and reverence are set far deeper than the level of any conscious principle of modal ethos.

3. Theoretical descriptions of the 5th century BCE.

The earlier decades of the 5th century, which produced Pindar's finest efforts as a poet-composer, also brought the first surviving theoretical statements concerning the ethical power of music. Much speculation has been devoted to the question of the ultimate origins of such views. Among the Greeks themselves there was a tendency to look to Egypt; Plato was one who did so, wrongly supposing that in matters of music Egyptian conservatism had never been shaken. It now appears likely that belief in ethos originated in a view of music as magically potent that was widely held throughout the Near and Middle East. The liberating force was Pythagorean theory, whereby musical phenomena were brought under the control of number and of proportionate relationship (one of the main senses of harmonia). This liberation held within itself the danger that a new kind of imprisonment might emerge from it, through a devotion to abstract harmonic relationships and cosmic values. The second escape, to a psychology and an aesthetic of musical expression, can be seen in the doctrines of Damon, a contemporary and friend of Pericles, as they compare with those of the Pythagorean philosopher Philolaus of Tarentum.

According to Philolaus, the nature of number and relationship does not admit of falsehood. Number and truth, he asserted, are in close natural union; and it is in the cosmic force of harmonia that the disparate elements of the cosmos are interrelated and men are enabled to grasp reality. Although the authenticity of the fragments attributed to Philolaus remains under dispute, no one doubts that they represent Pythagorean doctrine. This is true also of the statement by Damon that musical activity arises out of the activity of the soul and affects its nature favourably or unfavourably. It is in his example of ‘liberal and beautiful’ songs and dances as beneficial that the departure from tradition begins to be evident. The first of these terms, which means ‘befitting a freeborn man’, shows a combination of social and ethical presuppositions, and the second seems prophetic of the view of the beautiful that was to take shape in 4th-century philosophy. The Damonian school is also credited with the doctrine that even in a continuous melody the notes create or bring out character through similarity. The reference may be to a simple stepwise melody.

Damon was the first musical theoretician who is supposed to have applied moral valuation to the metrical complexes known as rhythms. With this tradition, doctrines of rhythmic ethos made their earliest appearance. Plato ascribed to him the claim that changes in musical styles (tropoi) are always accompanied by radical changes in the laws of the state. This statement, in which the use of tropos may show the influence of Pythagorean terminology, has fundamental importance both for ethos and for education. Although he has been credited on too little evidence with too much influence, Damon is undoubtedly a major figure in the history of musical ethos. Through his direct agency or mediation, doctrinal foundations were strongly established. The system gives the impression of having appeared suddenly, almost as if without antecedents; yet this cannot have been the case. It is difficult to add anything to the hypothesis of a distant origin in magical beliefs of the Near and Middle East; but the currents of musical influence during the formative period were apparently running westward from Asia rather than northward from Egypt.

The later decades of the 5th century offer little evidence bearing upon ethos. When the Socrates of Aristophanes’ Clouds (649–51) speaks of familiarity with the rhythms as a social accomplishment, very possibly he was reflecting the playwright’s own low opinion of Damon's concern with metre. In any case, the vital ethical factor is not considered. As the century came to its end Timotheus of Miletus violently altered the time-honoured choral hymn to Dionysus, the dithyramb, making the text an elaborate libretto and filling the musical accompaniment with frequent modulations. He thereby did away with the possibility of any single and stable ethos, to the extent that modality could contribute to this.

4. Plato.

In the early 4th century Plato condemned such practice. In all musical matters he commended singleness, simplicity and universality. Technical matters seldom came under discussion, for his interests lay elsewhere. Thus in the Symposium certain aulos melodies attributed to Marsyas are credited by Alcibiades with a unique power to grip the soul, whatever the performer's degree of skill may be; the ethos is wholly melodic and rhythmic. While Alcibiades could only comment on the power of music, Socrates as Plato's spokesman sought to account for it. In doing so he used Pythagorean estimates of the importance of number, the formal component that mode and rhythm hold in common. The dynamic process of ethos, he explained, consists in these two aspects of musical experience lodging fast in the soul's deepest recesses. A more abstract explanation is given by the real or fictitious Pythagorean scholar Timaeus in the dialogue that bears his name. Harmony has motions akin to those of the soul, which it can help to restore to an inner concord; in like manner, rhythm is an aid to inner gracefulness.

According to the Laws, pleasure does not constitute a valid part of ethos, being merely the result of habituation; but the kind of music to which one becomes accustomed makes a great deal of difference to the moral result. Accordingly, the place of music in education received close attention from Plato. Habituation also involves a belief in mimesis, and Plato fully recognized the role which this element plays in the forming of habits. He repeatedly failed, however, to reconcile the component of musical ethos which is mimetic of human attitudes with the rhythmic and melodic component of ethos. Thus it was impossible for him to maintain any coherent theory, although many of his individual insights are brilliant. Especially admirable is the realism so often evident in his discussions of the place of modality and rhythm in man's life, even when the lack of a central position produces uncertain or contradictory responses. He saw music as a vehicle of ethos through mimesis; and he held to this practical view even if it had to be at the expense of Pythagorean theories of number and cosmic harmony.

5. The Hibeh papyrus.

A papyrus of the 3rd century BCE, the so-called Hibeh discourse, contains a sharp attack upon believers in musical ethos. There is some reason to believe that its contents were originally written not much later than 390 BCE; they may thus be slightly earlier than Plato's Republic. Their unknown author (?Alcidamus) chose a variety of targets: fanatical harmonicists, the Damonian school and probably, on the subject of mimetic excellence, Plato himself. Trivial in tone and argument, the Hibeh discourse may gain its greatest distinction from the fact that it contains the earliest certain reference to ethical qualities associated with the genera. The author denied, for example, ‘that the chromatic makes men cowardly or that the enharmonic makes them brave’. Throughout much of the discourse the author attacked a general type of harmonicist for absurd extremes of behaviour, and was not so much concerned with such serious theorists of music as Damon or Plato.

6. Aristotle.

Certain views maintained by Plato were taken up by his great pupil: belief in habituation as the source of character; recognition of music's influence on education for better or worse. It is the differences, however, that predominate. Aristotle avoided applying ethical terms to the actual experience of music. According to his theories of psychology and perception this experience was not an attitude of the soul but merely a pathos, something that happens to one. Moreover, he regarded music as a skill rather than a virtue; and in making this statement he substituted ta mousika, which approaches the meaning of the modern term ‘music’, for mousikē, the time-honoured concept in which music as such was fused with a literary text to form an unquestioned unity.

Aristotle's treatment of rhythm has not survived; when he dealt with mode, he was usually matter-of-fact. For the symbolic treatment of the harmonia by Pythagorean theorists, and for their use or abuse of number theory generally, he showed polite contempt. His flat pronouncement that the harmonia consists of notes and nothing else is typical. In one passage only did he devote some attention to practical problems of ethos: the long examination of music, considered as a part of education, with which the extant text of the Politics comes to a close. Here his disagreement with Plato becomes particularly evident. He declared repeatedly that education in music looks towards the later enjoyment of cultured diversion, not towards noble living. Paideia itself now has its restricted sense of elementary schooling rather than that of the lifelong culture experienced through music and poetry. Instrumental music is regarded as capable in itself of expressing ethos. The classification of the modes – evaluated according to the findings of unidentified experts – no longer has an ethical basis, and all of the modes are approved for discriminating use. Such discrimination is to be shown partly by providing vulgar audiences with a corresponding kind of music.

These practical recommendations are believed to have their theoretical basis in two propositions: that modes and rhythms contain ‘likenesses’ (homoiōmata) of every emotion and ethical state, and that we have a natural affinity for them. The theory of likenesses, which may owe something to Damon, was probably meant to be conformable to Aristotle's belief that in perception we receive the impression of the ‘form’ of an object. The claim of natural affinity for modality and rhythm, twice asserted, calls to mind Pythagorean beliefs relating to the soul's motion, although such a source seems unlikely. Probably the most provocative element in all the comments on music in the Politics involves the concept of katharsis, or purgation. Here the background is an old and primitive way of looking at ethos. The Pythagoreans had employed the allopathic variety of purgative therapy, whereas the Aristotelian method is homeopathic: a state of passion is relieved by rousing the same sort of feeling rather than the opposite sort. In the end there is no adequate explanation of katharsis, since it appears only for a moment in the Poetics. What might have been Aristotle's greatest contribution to ethos theory was never realized.

7. Hellenistic theorists.

With Aristotle's pupil, Aristoxenus of Tarentum, begins the Hellenistic and Greco-Roman approach to music which resulted in a long series of handbooks on theory. Aristoxenus himself maintained a high ethical view of his subject; he lamented the passing of the old standards of performance. His concern, however, was practical (like Aristotle, he accepted all the modes as useful) and markedly empirical, and his interest lay in aesthetic theory rather than in doctrines of ethos. Much later, in the time of marcus tullius Cicero, the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara repeatedly attacked the presentation of such doctrines by a minor Stoic, Diogenes of Babylon. One example of these seems to have been the claim that music, when correctly used, creates a highly rhythmic and harmonious nature – this doctrine represents familiar orthodoxy since Damon's time. Diogenes was concerned mainly to present musical-ethical experience as rational, while Philodemus, as a follower of Epicurus, considered the whole of music irrational. Apart from the arguments of individual proponents, the distinctive feature of Stoic thought that has a bearing upon ethos is its treatment of the passions as disturbances within the soul. This view accords well with the remarks in the Timaeus on the power of rhythm and harmony to regulate the soul's motion. To insist upon music as rational, on the other hand, introduces a quite different element.

8. Ethos and the genera.

The technical handbooks of the late classical and early Christian centuries repeatedly offer ethical descriptions not only of modes but of genera, rhythms and even individual poetic feet. The abstractness of such system-making is far more evident than its usefulness. To consider what ethos meant to late theoreticians leads in most instances to a dead end, and for actual musical practice the safest conclusions to be drawn are probably the most general ones. Distinctions according to genus concern the varying position of the two inner notes of the tetrachord, giving the three main genera together with many chroai, or ‘shadings’. The ethos of the diatonic genus was thought to be virile, strong and austere. Eventually this strength was looked down upon as lacking in urbanity, but such a judgment signifies little more than a shift of popularity that had given one of the other genera a favoured position. The chromatic genus was usually associated with lamentation and womanish softness; the descriptions vary somewhat.

The case of the enharmonic genus is a special one. According to tradition, it first appeared in a form that did not have the semitone evenly divided into two dieses. This simpler version, attributed to the Asiatic aulete Olympus the mysian, had strongly sacral associations from the beginning; it was used in some measure throughout the Hellenic period. The later enharmonic, with a divided semitone in the tetrachord, was described by the Greeks (not necessarily correctly) as the most recently introduced of the three genera. The fact that they honoured it so highly has been thought puzzling, and their ascription of ethos to it may have been founded upon a response to the earlier form. In the Hibeh discourse, the author's denial shows that some thought the enharmonic genus capable of making men brave – a belief that was at least well suited to the special connection (real or supposed) between this genus and Dorian modality. The fact that the Hibeh writer also denied that the use of the chromatic genus could cause cowardice shows a pattern of beliefs regarding generic ethos already formed, or taking shape, in the period when Plato wrote his Republic. Later in the 4th century Aristotle spoke admiringly of the melodies of Olympus, which probably retained the ‘primitive’ enharmonic. As the bitter comments of his pupil Aristoxenus make clear, the newer form of the genus had been almost forgotten by the time the century ended. It was replaced by the chromatic, which eventually gave way to a re-establishment of the diatonic. The latter development may, as Winnington-Ingram has suggested, be connected with a reappearance of modality from folk sources. If so, the areas of speculation concerning ethos widen appreciably.

9. Ethos and rhythm.

According to Socrates in the Republic, Damon applied ethical descriptions to rhythms and also to poetic feet. The Aristophanic evidence noted earlier seems to support this statement. Socrates said little about the rhythms, preferring that questions of detail be addressed to Damon. He did state that they were mimetic, like the modes, and that they derived their proper pattern from the natural rhythm of a good life. In a description that recalls this principle, Aristotle spoke of the dactylic hexameter as the most sedate and stately of all metres; much later, the writers on rhythmic ethos called dactylic metres solemn. In the late handbooks, most of which are collected in Jan's Musici scriptores graeci, rhythms are categorized ethically according to a great variety of criteria. Long syllables were thought to convey exaltation and serenity, whereas short ones roused the hearer to wildness. The same criterion of syllable length was applied to individual feet, especially to the dactyl, and to the sequences beginning or ending a line of verse. Frequent pauses were considered agitating, and individual feet were classified further according to the even or uneven pattern of metrical units they embodied. Tempo (agōgē) had unusual importance: its variations could give different kinds of ethos to the same rhythm. Plato mentioned it as one of Damon's concerns.

To find further examples of fact or convincing conjecture that will support the theorizing of the handbooks is not always easy. It seems likely, as one possibility, that in his dealings with rhythmic ethos Damon used the comparative method associated with him, the sunkrisis of the Hibeh discourse. More important, in lyric and tragedy, from the 7th century BCE onwards, metrical effects in both rhythms and feet were carefully chosen with reference to the emotional content of the text or the dramatic action or both. The handbooks offer elaboration and conjecture based upon the evident fact of this practice; the truly valuable source is the literature itself.

10. Other factors.

Late theorists mentioned additional ethical categorizations, but these can be noted here only in passing. The high, middle and low regions of the vocal or instrumental gamut were described as enervating, quieting and rousing, respectively. The terms probably derive ultimately from the triple classification of melodies mentioned by Aristotle in the Politics. Modulation (metabolē) might involve shifts among these regions, as well as between one scale or genus and another; a mysterious further type, used in melopeia, supposedly involved tetrachordal ethos in a special way that is not clear.

Granting that many other factors had a measure of importance, it is nevertheless impossible to escape the fact that Greek views on ethos were concerned primarily with modality. Several bases were proposed, some clearly stronger than others. A particularly weak choice was that of interpretation in terms of ethnic character. The 4th-century Academician known as Heraclides Ponticus attempted such an analysis. Religious considerations, another possible basis, were seldom mentioned prominently. The contrast between Apollo and Dionysus, between native Hellenic elements and alien oriental ones, has been given a disproportionate prominence by modern scholarship. A further possibility is that of characterizing a mode ethically through its technical properties. There are some instances of this in the treatise of Aristides quintilianus and other Neoplatonic sources.

Finally there is the ethical description of a mode or rhythm through association with a form of literary composition, serious or popular. The fact that this offers no consistent basis of theory was made clear several times in the case of Phrygian. Nevertheless, association of ethos with literary forms in fact occurred much more frequently than any other association throughout the Hellenic period. The extremely wide range of this approach, from choral odes to drinking-songs, makes it the most nearly adequate single explanation of beliefs concerning ethos.

There is no one explanation, however, even as there is no one theory. The so-called ‘theory of ethos’ was made up of many views that differed widely at times and possessed as a common basis simply the conviction that music exerts a moral influence upon men. During the chief periods of creative and critical Greek thought, these views had importance for writers of the highest eminence; throughout succeeding centuries they established attitudes towards musical ethos that seriously influenced the thinking of the Romans and of their Christian successors.

11. Late antiquity and the early Middle Ages.

In Roman culture, the process of transmission began during the 1st century BCE, when the polymath marcus terentius Varro made ethical value his criterion in assessing the role of music. Writing around the beginning of the Christian era, the geographer Strabo referred to the ancient view of poetry as teaching virtue. He noted, moreover, that even in his own day music teachers claimed to impart culture and to improve moral character (ēthē, plural of ēthos). Quintilian, that most eminent of all Roman educators, associated music with rhetoric as Cicero had done. Evidently he believed in its ethical powers, and he spoke of the ‘silent power’ of rhythm and melody present even when instruments alone are employed. When he dealt with ethical problems themselves, however, what concerned him was the spoken word; and what he valued about music was its contribution to the training of the ‘good man skilled in speaking’, the orator.

Musical ethos was more characteristically associated with philosophy as a propaideutic. The connection was made by Philo Judaeus in the beginning decades of the 1st century CE, by certain of the 3rd-century Neoplatonic philosophers and eventually, in the early 6th century, by Boethius. During the patristic period, between the last two of these stages, attitudes varied according to locality. Basil the Great was typical of the Greek Fathers in taking his cue from Plato's discussions of the importance of music for education. Among the Western Fathers, Augustine of hippo defined music as ‘knowing how to sing and play well’. This concept had already been put forward by Aristides Quintilianus, who had gone back to Damon and Plato and also to Aristoxenus. Its significance lies in its combination of an aesthetic dimension with an ethical one. Boethius ignored the first of these; and although he discussed the second at some length, he defined the true musicus strictly in terms of a rational and speculative command of the subject. For him, the propaedeutic virtue of music was that, like mathematics, it strengthened the rational powers and drew the soul into the realm of true being through the force of number, that is, Pythagorean number.

12. Conclusion.

During the Renaissance and modern periods, the question of ethical power in music has not ceased to exercise the minds of theorists. It must nevertheless be acknowledged that the particular constellation of beliefs that constituted Hellenic ethos doctrine had no continuing existence. Individual elements reappeared at times, most vividly perhaps in the 16th century, when the comments of Plato and Aristotle were echoed by many and diverse admirers ranging from the Italian composer-theorists to John Calvin. But the glory had departed: the old Hellenic beliefs had been adapted to new ends, not only in the West but in India and the Islamic countries; and during this process of adaptation they were refashioned with increasing freedom. The history of their new forms is proper subject matter for a separate study.

Bibliography

MGG1 (W. Vetter)

F.A. Gevaert: Histoire et théorie de la musique de l’antiquité (Ghent, 1875–81/R), i, 190–9; ii, 60–62, 118–25

G. Amsel: De vi atque indole rhythmorum (Breslau, 1887)

K. von Jan, ed.: Musici scriptores graeci (Leipzig, 1895/R)

H. Abert: Die Lehre vom Ethos in der griechischen Musik (Leipzig, 1899/R)

M. Abert: ‘Der gegenwärtige Stand der Forschung über die antike Musik’, JbMP 1921, ii, 21–40

W. Vetter: ‘Musikunterricht (ethisch)’, Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, xvi/1 (Stuttgart, 1933), 877–84

R. Schäfke: Geschichte der Musikästhetik in Umrissen (Berlin, 1934, 2/1964/R), 1–190

R.P. Winnington-Ingram: Mode in Ancient Greek Music (Cambridge, 1936/R), 2–3, 46–59, 66–8

L.P. Wilkinson: ‘Philodemus on Ethos in Music’, Classical Quarterly, xxxii (1938), 174–81

O.J. Gombosi: Tonarten und Stimmungen der antiken Musik (Copenhagen, 1939/R), 136–42

C. Sachs: The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, East and West (New York, 1943), 248ff

A. Plebe: Filodemo e la musica (Torino, 1957)

H. John: ‘Das musikerzieherische Wirken Pythagoras' und Damons: ein Beitrag zur Ethoslehre der Griechen’, Altertum, viii (1962), 67–72

E.A. Lippman: ‘The Sources and Development of the Ethical View of Music in Ancient Greece’, MQ, xlix (1963), 188–209

W.D. Anderson: Ethos and Education in Greek Music (Cambridge, MA, 1966)

M.C. Beardsley: Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present (New York, 1966)

D. Zoltai: A zeneesztétika története, i: Ethosz és affektus (Budapest, 1966, 2/1969; Ger. trans., 1970, as Ethos und Affekt)

G. Wille: Musica romana (Amsterdam, 1967), 434–8

J. García López: ‘Sobre el vocabulario ético-musical del griego’, Emerita, xxxvii (1969), 335–52 [with Eng. summary]

J. Solomon: ‘The Diastaltic Ethos’, Classical Philology, lxxvi (1981), 93–100

G.M. Rispoli: ‘Sensazione, esperienza, giudizio tecnico: testimonianze su origine e sviluppi di una concezione estetica’, Annali della Facoltà di lettere e filosofia della Università di Napoli, xxiv (1981–2), 105–19

E. Tsugami: ‘Ptolemaios no tonos ethos ron’, Bigaku, cxxxv (1983), 32–41

T.J. Mathiesen: ‘Harmonia and Ethos in Ancient Greek Music’, JM, iii (1984), 264–79

P. Ciarlantini: Phonos ed ethos: aspetti di estetica musicale greca (Macerata, 1985)

A. Gostoli: ‘Terpandro e la funzione etico-politica della musica nella cultura spartana del VII sec. a.C.’, La musica in Grecia: Urbino 1985, 231–7

K. Ioannides: ‘L'ethos musical chez Platon’, Philosophia, xv–xvi (1985–6), 254–65

H. Schueller: The Idea of Music (Kalamazoo, MI, 1988)

T.J. Mathiesen: ‘Music, Aesthetics, and Cosmology in Early Neo-Platonism’, Paradigms in Medieval Thought: Applications in Medieval Disciplines: Northridge, CA, 1987, ed. N. van Deusen and A.E. Ford (Lewiston, NY, 1990), 37–64

Warren Anderson/Thomas J. Mathiesen


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Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
Philosophy of music, §II: Historical survey, antiquity-1750

II. Historical survey, antiquity–1750

1. Hellenic and Hellenistic thought.

The commonest positions in the aesthetics of music are borrowed and developed from classical antiquity. Greek musical practice being inaccessible, the theories related to it have been freely adapted to the practice of whatever day it might be – a licence less available to those who similarly exploited classical writings on less fugitive arts. The language of musical aesthetics has thus often suggested a certain remoteness from what was actually going on.

Although ‘music’ (mousikē) is a Greek word, classical Greece did not use it to mean what we call music. It had no word for that. Etymologically, the word means ‘the business of the Muses’, who were goddesses of poetic inspiration. As a body of practice, the ‘music’ of classical Greece extended to cover all imaginative uses of language and dance, and as an object of theoretical study ‘music’ was largely the study of scale-construction and tuning systems. But this divergence between Greek conceptualization and our own dwindled in Hellenistic times.

Among the debris of ancient thought we may distinguish at least six views about the nature and significance of music. The first view is assigned to the thinkers, mostly anonymous, associated with the name of Pythagoras (6th century bce), traditionally the first to take note of the relevance of certain small-number ratios to the intervals recognized as consonant and invariant in the music of the day. By the 5th century bce the Pythagoreans were speculating that similar ratios should be discoverable everywhere in the world. That music embodies numerical principles and somehow answers to the laws of nature seems already to have been accepted everywhere, from China to Babylon; the Pythagorean contribution was to make this hitherto mysterious relationship amenable to rational inquiry. The ratios found in musical intervals were sought in the distances of planets, in the compositions of stuffs, in the souls of good men and in everything that contributed to cosmic order. Musical structures should thus have analogues in the human mind and in the world at large, and their felt but ineffable meaningfulness should be explicable by those analogies. Music was important as the only field in which these ratios had been discovered rather than merely postulated. But the mathematicians of the 4th century bce borrowed the name ‘music’ for the branch of their study devoted to the theory of proportions, and the specifically audible varieties and manifestations of such proportions became theoretically accidental. The doctrine that music was or ought to be an ‘abstract’ system of relationships stateable in a set of equations has haunted musical aesthetics ever since, although the habit of linking music to astronomy by a supposed ‘music of the spheres’ died with Kepler (1619).

The second Greek view of music adapted the Pythagorean ideas to fit the notion, popular then as now, that national music expressed national character or ethos. Damon of Athens seems to have done the adapting in the middle of the 5th century bce (see Lasserre, 1954). National styles or ‘modes’ were construed as essentially scale systems, whose intervals are generated by ratios characteristic of the personality types and behaviour patterns of their users, Dorians, Phrygians and the like. Damon thought of music as primarily a means of moral indoctrination. Plato, from whom these ideas descend to modern times, cut them loose from their mathematical underpinnings: his Republic (c380 bce) merely postulates a series of causal connections, as follows. The specific mental characteristics that assign a person to a given sort find expression in corresponding patterns of thinking; these patterns achieve utterance in characteristic forms of poetical speech, and such formal speech evokes a fitting melodic and rhythmical accompaniment. To hear, and especially to perform, the resulting music will tend to re-create the originating mental characteristics, so that the student performer becomes the same sort of person as his composer-teacher. The charms of music are thus the same as those exerted by an attractive personality, except that music is expressive through and through whereas the excellence of a man may require him to be inexpressively reticent. In this Platonic version of the ethos theory, the expressiveness of music reflects that of an actual or possible poetic text. This answers to the Greek practice of teaching gentlemen to accompany themselves on plucked strings, leaving wind instruments and bravura generally to low-born professionals. The verbalizing version of ethos theory has the advantage over the mathematicizing version that it calls for no cosmological commitments; on the other hand, this modesty leaves it with no hidden resources to counter empirical rebuttals.

A third view of music, which has also proved perennial, is implicit in the histories of music that survive from the first centuries of our era. Like the analogous histories of other arts, these sources take a technical view of music: its history is the progressive mastery of more and more elaborate instruments, performing techniques and sound patterns. Music is seen as exploring the possibilities of a self-contained world of sound. However, this view of cultural history is modified by an assumption derived from Aristotle’s cosmology and reinforced by cultural nostalgia for the classical age of Greece. The world of sound, like the world at large, is not infinite; the possibilities to be explored are not endless; and the fruitful development of the art of music was completed long ago at a period defined by that completion as classical. This complication of the progressivist view of music has also been revived from time to time, with the idealized classical age suitably updated; but its revivers are mostly musical revolutionaries who modify the theory by claiming that new worlds of music can be substituted for the old, so that new explorations can proceed – even if, as conservatives will protest, the new worlds cannot sustain human life. In its extreme form, this last modification becomes the claim that every serious musical work is or should be a self-contained musical universe.

The ancient progressivist theories of music history, whether or not they held that progress must end somewhere, ran counter to a deep-seated belief in social degeneration, which assigned the ‘golden age’ to a technically primitive past. When these tendencies collide, we have a view of music history in which musicians continually press for innovations which statesmen and moralists untiringly resist. Plato, writing as a moralist, reinterpreted the conflict between reactionary and progressive musicians as one between two kinds of music: one, the true music, rationally based and logically developed, exemplifies the structural principles of all reality, including the human mind; the other music, impressionistic and fantasticated, merely imitates the sounds of nature and the passing show of temporary feelings. Variants of this contrast, which despite its incoherence is deeply rooted in Plato’s general metaphysic, keep reappearing in the history of aesthetics, most recently in Adorno’s pitting of the severities of dodecaphony against the confectionery of the culture industry. The contrast has been strikingly reflected in recent decades in debates over the proprieties of interpretation: a music whose vocation is subtly to mould the perceptible surface of sound is a performer’s art for which composers merely provide the material, but if music is to unfold profound tonal structures it must be elaborated in the study and its performer must reveal only such treasures as the composer has buried for him.

The reason why the underlying view of music history whose vicissitudes we have traced gives rise to such continued controversy is that it starts by equating the progress of music with the elaboration of its means rather than with the exploration of deep structures. Even the intonational researches whereby the Greek theorists finally excogitated a unified system, within which the originally incommensurable tribal modes could each appear as a possible variant, were represented as a mere development of new possibilities of modulation rather than as an investigation of the nature of modality as such.

A less tendentious account of the division within music that the ancient histories of music sought to explicate is adumbrated in Aristotle’s Politics (c330 bce): there are two musics because there are two uses for music. Rituals and festivals call for an exciting and ecstatic music, demanding virtuosity of its performers and moving its audience to a salubrious frenzy. A gentleman needs a different sort of music to play for his recreation, as one of the amenities of everyday life. ‘What passion cannot Music raise and quell?’, Dryden was to ask. But not all music has the raising and quelling of passion as its function.

A fourth view of music was sketched by Aristoxenus (c300 bce), a student of Aristotle. He refuted the Pythagorean numerology and the ethos theory that was built on it by pointing out that the ratios generating harmonies are inaudible, and music is concerned with the audible. What can be heard is sounds in relation. The ear certainly needs the aid of memory and mind, but the contribution of memory is to make protracted structures perceptible, and the intellect is called on, not to intuit any underlying reality, whether cosmic or psychic, but to grasp the mutual relations of notes within the system of a scale. Music is thus a self-contained phenomenological system, and the significant form of any work is not derived from its relation to any other reality but is identical with the principle of its own organization. Why men should make such things and delight in them Aristoxenus does not say, but no Aristotelian need ask: any refined exercise of mind and senses is inherently delightful, for man is by nature hungry for information. Aristoxenus concedes that such audible constructions may acquire by association an ethical significance, but that is adventitious.

Aristoxenus’s embryonic formalism strikes a responsive chord today, but was little noted in antiquity. To Ptolemy in the 2nd century ce, he was only the bellwether of one of the two extremist schools of musical theory, the latter-day Pythagoreans being the other. Ear and reason are judges of harmony, says Ptolemy, the ear establishing the facts and the reason divining their explanation. Musical theorists, like astronomers, must lay bare the design that unifies the phenomena, thus showing that the real is not irrational. He complained that the Aristoxenians trust the ear alone and forgo theoretical explanation, while the Pythagoreans trust reason at the cost of observational accuracy. The philosophy of music is thus shown to involve difficulties of principle that are still central in 20th-century philosophy of science.

A fifth view of music was current among the followers of Epicurus, represented by Lucretius in the 1st century bce, for whom music was nothing but a source of innocent pleasure, natural in the sense that it represents a complex use of man’s natural endowments: ‘Every creature has a sense of the purposes for which he can use his own powers’. Such elaborations, discovered by accident and developed by experience, afford relaxation, distraction in distress and an outlet for excess energy. No further explanation of musical delight is possible or necessary, and the pretensions of highfalutin theories are merely absurd. The Epicurean tradition did not survive the triumph of Christianity, but such Philistine mutterings remain a permanent possibility for aesthetics, one that is congenial to most of us some of the time and to some of us most of the time.

A sixth, sceptical view goes beyond the Epicureans by agreeing that music is a diversion but denying that it is natural. Musical practice is conventional through and through: it may have effects on the character, but only because it is believed to have them. In fact, the Sceptics denied that music could be an object of knowledge, since it is constituted by the relations between notes, which themselves have no reality; and what is unreal cannot be known. This ontological scepticism, known to us from the work of Sextus Empiricus (3rd century ce), was to find, when less crudely stated, a permanent place in musical aesthetics.

The last four of these ancient traditions, the ones that flourished after the Greek cities lost their independence, allow music no social or civic significance. When an art claims autonomy, it may be a sign that it accepts a peripheral place in the culture of its day.



F.E. Sparshott/Lydia Goeh

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Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
Pantomime

(from Gk. pantomimos: ‘one who does everything by imitation’).

A musical-dramatic genre, taking different forms in different periods and places. The Latin pantomimus originally referred to a Roman actor who specialized in dumb show, supported by instrumental music and a chorus; by extension the word denotes a dramatic representation in dumb show. Normal modern English usage is confined to a theatrical entertainment, usually presented in the Christmas season, which, whilst no longer in dumb show, continues to use music and other spectacular elements to support a children’s tale that is often no more than a flimsy backcloth for buffoonery, dancing, topical songs and allusions and, until comparatively recent times, a harlequinade.

1. Ancient Rome.

The origins of pantomime are of great antiquity, but it was made fashionable in Rome in 22 bce by Pylades of Cilicia and Bathyllus of Alexandria. As Horace wrote (Satires, i, 5, 64), to dance the shepherd Cyclops in tragic mask and buskins was nothing new. According to Macrobius (Saturnalia, ii, 7) Pylades was responsible for introducing instruments and chorus; Bathyllus seems to have specialized in light, satyric themes, and Pylades was in style closer to the tragedy. Pantomime usually took its subject matter from mythology, but also from history and the themes of tragic drama; unlike straight mime, it was not coarse.

The performance took place on a public stage or in a private house. The pantomimus, sometimes supported by a speaking actor, wore a graceful silk costume and a fine mask with closed lips. The chorus and instrumentalists stood behind him. The pantomimus sometimes appeared in as many as five roles in turn, each with its own mask. There are tributes to the eloquence and directness of a good dancer who could undertake to retell a whole tale with several parts, and to the expressiveness of one performer whose powers of mime, Lucian wrote, were rich enough to overcome the language barrier for a foreign visitor – unable to comprehend the narrative songs, he nevertheless so highly prized the actor’s miming that he wished to take him home to his own country to act as an interpreter (a similar tribute was paid to ‘Kasperl’ Laroche – himself originally a dancer – in Vienna at the beginning of the 19th century, by the Turkish minister Ismael Effendi who, largely ignorant of German, claimed to understand what Laroche was saying, thanks to his mimetic powers; see Ueberblick des Ueberblicks des neuesten Zustandes der Literatur des Theaters und des Geschmacks in Wien, by C** X**, 1802, p.78).

The use of steps, posture and especially of gesture (‘manus loquacissimae, digiti clamosi’) was aided by conventions not unlike those familiar from modern ballet. The role of the songs seems to have been minor; those fragments that survive are in Greek rather than Latin. Lucan and Statius were among poets who were not afraid to abase their talents by earning good money writing pantomimes, for it became a highly popular form of entertainment, not without importance in its effects on morality (especially after females began to appear in pantomimes), and even on the political scene the historian Zosimus attributed the moral decline of Rome to the vast popularity of the pantomimi.

Peter Branscombe

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Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
Pan.

God of the Greeks and Romans. He was native to Arcadia, a mountainous rural region in the Peloponnese, where shepherding was a major occupation. His father was Hermes, the only other important Arcadian god and the mythological inventor of the lyre. He had the torso and head of a man and the legs, tail and horns of a goat. His attributes were primarily musical and amorous, the latter association stemming from the shepherd's desire for flock fertility. In the 5th century BCE his cult spread to Athens, and subsequently to other urban areas of Greece and Rome, where he symbolized pastoral love, revelry and musicality. Pictorially he was shown in the company of nymphs, satyrs, Dionysus and the Muses, sometimes dancing and at other times playing the aulos or more often the syrinx. Cassiodorus and Isidore of Seville attributed to him the invention of a wind instrument called the pandoura.


Pan playing the panpipes, with a sackbut and recorder (right) and racket, cornett and bass recorder (left): ivory carving (1618–24) by Christoph Angermaier (Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich)
Bavarian National Museum, Munich

In mythology he was the subject of two musical myths, both of which are related in Ovid's Metamorphoses: the story of his invention of the panpipes (i.689–712; see Syrinx) and the story of his musical contest with Phoebus Apollo (xi.153–79). In the latter, a variant of the musical contest between Apollo and Marsyas (see Aulos), Pan with his syrinx brashly challenges Apollo with his kithara. Apollo's art is superior, but Midas, one of the judges, prefers Pan's and as a punishment is made to grow ass's ears. Bach celebrated the myth in his dramma per musica Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan bwv201.

Bibliography

M. Jost: ‘Pan’, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (Oxford, 3/1996)

G. Wille: Musica romana (Amsterdam, 1967), 525–8

James W. McKinnon

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Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
Oxyrhynchos Hymn.

The earliest Christian hymn (ad c.300) for which the music is preserved (in Greek vocal notation). It takes its name from the place in Egypt where the papyrus was discovered.

Oxyrhynchus papyrus 1786, showing the end of a hymn written in Greek vocal notation, end of the 3rd century CE (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

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Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
Nero, Emperor of Rome [Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus]

(b 15 Dec 37 CE; ruled 54–68 CE; d 9 June 68 CE). Roman ruler and musician. Our knowledge of his passionate concern with music comes from Tacitus (Annals, xiii–xvi), Suetonius (Nero) and Dio Cassius (lxi–lxiii). While still a boy he showed a dilettante's interest in musical performance, which had reached remarkable heights of technical perfection during this period. Immediately upon his accession, and encouraged by his tutor Seneca, he began studies with the famed kitharode Terpnus and undertook a severe regimen of dieting and purges, even wearing lead plates to strengthen his chest. So great was his commitment that six years passed before he would take part in a public musical competition. There is much testimony, moreover, to his elaborate and unfailing observance of every tiny detail of professional etiquette, carried out with the greatest apparent diffidence.

After predictable triumphs at Rome, he ventured to make appearances elsewhere, eventually in Greece itself. His repertory consisted principally of kitharoedic nomoi and lyric excerpts from tragedy; the latter he delivered in full costume and masked (as the blinded Oedipus, for example, or a woman in the pangs of childbirth), with appropriate miming. Such extravagances, it has been suggested, gave rise to the rumour noted by Tacitus (Annals, xv.39.3) that during the great fire of 64 CE he celebrated the catastrophe by singing The Destruction of Troy, possibly one of the nomoi. Suetonius (Nero, 38) and Dio Cassius (lxii.18.1) reported the rumour as fact, and Dio added that the emperor put on a kitharode's costume. He seems to have practised the composition of both poetry and music extensively; a collection of his works existed after his death.

Nero's voice was husky and lacked fullness (Suetonius, Nero, 20). Nothing indicates that his pretensions to professional competence were justified. He nevertheless believed in his talent to the end: qualis artifex pereo – ‘What an artist dies in me!’ – were his last words.

Bibliography

B.W. Henderson: The Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero (London, 1903)

G. Wille: Musica romana (Amsterdam, 1967), 338–50

B.H. Warmington: Nero: Reality and Legend (London, 1969)

G. Wille: Einführung in das römische Musikleben (Darmstadt, 1977), 152–8

M. Griffin: Nero: the End of a Dynasty (London, 1984)

For further bibliography see Rome, §I.
Warren Anderson/Thomas J. Mathiesen

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Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
music on the Internet.

The Internet, otherwise known as the World Wide Web, has developed at a remarkable speed since the mid-1990s to become the most significant electronic communications network of the new millennium. Its impact on the dissemination of recorded music has already been considerable, displacing traditional modes of recording and broadcasting and raising fundamental issues of ownership and copyright. In essence the Internet has opened up the possibility of transmitting information of any origin between two or more locations anywhere in the world, providing that it can be suitably encoded and decoded in a digital format. In the case of music the technical specifications to be met are very demanding, both in terms of the rate at which the audio spectrum must be digitally sampled to ensure that all the necessary frequency components are captured for transmission, and in terms of the numerical accuracy of the individual samples. Fortunately the development of digital recording and broadcasting technology has made it possible to upgrade personal computers and related devices to a full multimedia specification at minimal extra cost, and such capabilities are now the rule rather than the exception.

Music audio, however, creates some major practical difficulties for the Internet itself. If transmitted as raw data, the quantities of digital information that have to be transmitted for every second of high-quality sound are considerable, creating significant congestion as the information flows freely across the network of data links which constitute the World Wide Web. Partial solutions to this problem have been devised through the design of special data-compression techniques that reduce the amount of information actually transmitted by permanently stripping out spectral components which the ear may not readily detect. Although the best of these achieve a quality of reproduction that is almost indistinguishable from the original, others are less successful. The most widely used consumer format, MP3, has led to the production of portable MP3 players which can store and reproduce up to an hour or more of MP3-coded music, thus creating an attractive alternative to the traditional compact disc.

From a commercial viewpoint, the popularity of the Internet is seen as a major threat to the record industry, since it is almost impossible to regulate its use. As a result there is a strong temptation to use the network to disseminate and acquire pirated versions of recordings at little or no cost. Techniques of encryption are available that will allow record companies to distribute recordings electronically to paying customers, and moreover ensure that the downloaded information cannot easily be copied without further payment. The practical difficulties of implementing such encryption systems, however, have conspired for the most part to defeat such initiatives, and the viability of the Internet as an alternative medium for record sales has yet to be fully assured.

Peter Manning

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Zambelis Spyros

Παλαιό Μέλος
Music of the spheres.

A Pythagorean doctrine postulating harmonious relationships among the planets governed by their proportionate speeds of revolution and by their fixed distance from the earth. Belief in a universe ordered by the same numerical proportions that produce musical harmonies is hinted at in surviving fragments of pre-Socratic Greek philosophers such as Anaximander and Parmenides. The Greeks attributed ideas about a harmonious universe to the ‘Chaldeans’ or Babylonians, from whom Jewish beliefs about an orderly cosmos hymning the praises of its Creator (expressed in the Psalms, the visions of Isaiah and Ezekiel, and the talmudic treatise Yoma) may also have been derived (for further details see Mesopotamia). The relationships of Indian and Chinese cosmologies to those of the ancient Near East have not been determined.

Pythagoras and his followers developed a series of analogies between musical consonances – derived from proportionate lengths of a stretched string – and natural phenomena. In Plato’s Timaeus the creation of the World-Soul, a model for the physical universe, is accomplished through the use of Pythagorean proportions; duple and triple geometric series are filled in with arithmetic and harmonic means, as a result of which one can see ‘the whole heaven to be a scale and a number’ (Aristotle, Metaphysics). The musical scale thus produced is that of Pythagorean tuning, and the World-Soul is created through the use of a kind of celestial monochord.

As described in the Timaeus the cosmic scale is not actual music but the foundation for the Greek science of harmonics. In the myth of Er (Republic, 617b.4–7) Plato described the universe as a set of concentric rings (planetary orbits) on the surface of each of which a Siren sits singing; together they form a harmonious sound, after Plato’s time interpreted literally as the music of the spheres – audible to but unnoticed by mortals who hear it from birth (see Plato, §2).

The influence of these two Platonic myths was great and long-lasting despite Aristotle’s rejection of a sonorous universe in favour of his own silent, frictionless spheres (On the Heavens, ii.9; see Aristotle, §2). In Neoplatonic commentaries, particularly those on Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis (itself derived from the myth of Er), the planetary harmony of the Sirens was conflated with the Timaeus scale. Aristides quintilianus extended cosmic harmony to include the sublunary elements (fire, air, water and earth), the seasons, the tides, the growth of plants, and – as a microcosmic mirror of the universe – man’s growth and behaviour. Ptolemy in his Harmonics distinguished between cosmic and psychic harmony; these categories became, in the Latin of Boethius, musica mundana and humana, to which was added the music played and sung by men (musica instrumentalis). The place of music in the medieval Quadrivium is a result of the central importance of neo-Pythagorean thought in late antiquity.

Jewish belief in angelic habitation of the universe, coloured by Gnostic angelology and given canonic standing in the 6th-century Dionysian hierarchies of angels (see Jewish music), led to a belief in musica celestis, the angelic music seen in countless medieval and Renaissance paintings and combined with musica mundana in the blazing vision of light and sound of Dante’s Paradiso.

Pythagorean ideas about cosmic harmony continued to be elaborated by Neoplatonists from Carolingian times until the end of the Renaissance. These ideas strongly influenced astronomers and astrologers, physicians, architects, humanist scholars and poets. There were occasional musical representations of planetary harmony; an example is the tableau L’armonia delle sfere designed for the Florentine intermedi of 1589.

Perhaps the last creative statement of the idea of the music of the spheres was made by Kepler (Harmonices mundi, 1619); but cosmic imagery of Pythagorean cast has persisted in the work of later philosophers (Leibniz, Schopenhauer), astronomers (J.E. Bode) and polymaths (Mersenne, Kircher). There are 20th-century writers such as Hans Kayser who might be called neo-Pythagoreans, and 20th-century musicians such as Hindemith for whom the music of the spheres has remained a vital if metaphorical concept.

Bibliography

A. Boeckh: ‘Über die Bildung der Weltseele im Timaeos des Platon’, Gesammelte kleine Schriften, iii (Leipzig, 1866), 109–80

A. von Thimus: Die harmonikale Symbolik des Alterthums (Cologne, 1868–76/R)

C. von Jan: ‘Die Harmonie der Sphären’, Philologus, lii (1893), 13–39

E. Frank: Plato und die sogenannten Pythagoreer (Halle, 1923)

J. Handschin: ‘Ein mittelalterlicher Beitrag zur Lehre von der Sphärenharmonie’, ZMw, ix (1926–7), 193–208

F.M. Cornford: Plato’s Cosmology: the Timaeus of Plato (London and New York, 1937)

L. Spitzer: ‘Classical and Christian Ideas of World Harmony’, Traditio, ii (1944), 409–64; iii (1945), 307–64

J. Handschin: ‘The Timaeus Scale’, MD, iv (1950), 3–42

J. Hutton: ‘Some English Poems in Praise of Music’, English Miscellany, ii, ed. M. Praz (Rome, 1951), 1–63

R.S. Brumbaugh: Plato’s Mathematical Imagination (Bloomington, IN, 1954/R)

J. Haar: Musica mundana: Variations on a Pythagorean Theme (diss., Harvard U., 1961)

R. Hammerstein: Die Musik der Engel: Untersuchungen zur Musikanschauung des Mittelalters (Berne and Munich, 1962)

D. Walker: ‘Kepler’s Celestial Music’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xxx (1967), 228–50

K. Meyer-Baer: Music of the Spheres and the Dance of Death: Studies in Musical Iconology (Princeton, NJ, 1970/R)

J. Haar: ‘Pythagorean Harmony of the Universe’, Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. P.P. Wiener (New York, 1973–4), iv, 38–9

E.G. McClain: The Pythagorean Plato (New York, 1978)

J. Godwin: Robert Fludd: Hermetic Philosopher and Surveyor of Two Worlds (London, 1979)

J. Rodgers and W. Ruff: ‘Kepler's Harmony of the World: a Realization for the Ear’, American Scientist, lxvii (1979), 286–92

C.V. Palisca: Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought (New Haven, CT, 1985)

J. Godwin: Harmonies of Heaven and Earth: the Spiritual Dimensions of Music from Antiquity to the Avant-Garde (London, 1987)

J. Godwin, ed.: Harmony of the Spheres: a Sourcebook of the Pythagorean Tradition in Music (Rochester, VT, 1993)

James Haar

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