Zambelis Spyros
Παλαιό Μέλος
The modern Western concept of ‘music’ differs from the ancient Greek concept of mousikē. For the Greeks, music was both an art and a subject of scientific and philosophical inquiry. It could provide relaxation and entertainment as well as playing a central role in civic and religious life. In the second book of his treatise On Music (Peri mousikēs), Aristides Quintilianus (fl late 3rd century – 4th century ce) remarks on the pervasiveness of music:
There is certainly no action among men that is carried out without music. Sacred hymns and offerings are adorned with music, specific feasts and the festal assemblies of cities exult in it, wars and marches are both aroused and composed through music. It makes sailing and rowing and the most difficult of the handicrafts not burdensome by providing an encouragement for the work.
Recognizing its broad role, he identified (i.5) theoretical and practical subclasses of mousikē, each consisting of various subjects and disciplines (for a diagram see Aristides Quintilianus), ranging from the narrowly technical to the broadly philosophical.
Centuries earlier, such conceptual breadth had enabled Plato, in the Timaeus, to employ music as a cosmological paradigm, but he was also concerned in the Republic and the Laws with practical issues such as the influence of music on behaviour and the types of music that should be allowed in an enlightened civilization. Likewise, in the eighth book of the Politics, Aristotle elaborated on the educational function of music and pointed out its effect in the development of character. The pure phenomena of music attracted the interest of various early philosophical schools, especially the Pythagoreans and another group that came to be known as ‘Harmonicists’ (harmonikoi); within this scientific tradition Aristotle's famous disciple Aristoxenus, in a treatise transmitted under the title Harmonic Elements (Harmonika stoicheia), developed a highly sophisticated system for analysing musical phenomena.
By the 2nd century bce the earlier practical, scientific and philosophical traditions of music were beginning to fade. Even so, for the next several centuries, authors of late antiquity would continue to write treatments of the subject in Greek and Latin. Byzantine and Arabic scholars remained interested in ancient Greek music theory well into the second millennium of the present era, but in the West the music and its theory began to be forgotten after the time of Boethius and Cassiodorus, leaving only faint and imperfect echoes in later treatises.
When Renaissance humanists began to rediscover the cultural treasures of antiquity, they were intrigued by the legendary powers and quality of the music of ancient Greece but were frustrated by the difficulties in recapturing the music of an earlier time. The humanists were also hampered by the absence of notated pieces of music, by incomplete or imperfect manuscripts of texts they wished to read, and by a limited knowledge and understanding of other valuable pieces of evidence, iconographic and archaeological.
In the 17th and 18th centuries more of the theoretical and literary sources that speak of ancient Greek music began to circulate in published form. The most important of these publications was Marcus Meibom's Antiquae musicae auctores septem (Amsterdam, 1652), an edition of seven Greek treatises with parallel translations in Latin, a book of some 800 pages. This edition complemented Athanasius Kircher's famous Musurgia universalis (Rome, 1650), and both influenced John Wallis's 1682 and 1699 editions of two treatises Meibom had not included in his collection: the Harmonics (Harmonika) of Ptolemy and Porphyry's commentary on it. These substantial technical publications provided 18th-century scholars with a wealth of material that appealed to their antiquarian and historical interests, while also supplying evidence for arguments about the purpose and meaning of music. L.C. Mizler von Kolof and Johann Mattheson, for example, drew on ostensibly divergent trends in the Greek sources to bolster their own aesthetic differences, while historians such as F.W. Marpurg, G.B. Martini and Sir John Hawkins tried to develop coherent historical surveys.
Greater control of the literary sources was accomplished during the 19th century, and the discovery of a fair amount of music notated on stone and papyrus and in manuscripts excited renewed debate about the value of ancient Greek music and the prospect of understanding its legendary powers. With the publication during the 20th century of new critical texts, catalogues of manuscripts, and an enormous quantity of critical studies, scholars continued to build on these earlier foundations.
It is impossible to reconstruct every detail of the music of the ancient Greeks, but a broad range of source material provides a good deal of information. Four principal types of sources are available for the study of ancient Greek music and music theory: literature, works of graphic or plastic art, archaeological remains, and notated pieces of music. No single class of source material is sufficient to present a complete picture; each gains in relation to the others, and only when viewed as a complex do they begin to reveal the richness and vitality of mousikē.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
προς επεξεργασία :
‘music’
mousikē
On Music (Peri mousikēs), Aristides Quintilianus (fl late 3rd century – 4th century ce)
diagram, Aristides Quintilianus
Plato, in the Timaeus
Republic
Laws
Politics, Aristotle
educational function of music
Pythagoreans
‘Harmonicists’ (harmonikoi)
Aristoxenus
Harmonic Elements (Harmonika stoicheia)
Latin. Byzantine and Arabic scholars
Boethius
Cassiodorus
Renaissance humanists
Marcus Meibom's Antiquae musicae auctores septem (Amsterdam, 1652)
Athanasius Kircher's famous Musurgia universalis (Rome, 1650),
John Wallis's 1682
the Harmonics (Harmonika) of Ptolemy and Porphyry's commentary
L.C. Mizler von Kolof
Johann Mattheson,
F.W. Marpurg
G.B. Martini
Sir John Hawkins
There is certainly no action among men that is carried out without music. Sacred hymns and offerings are adorned with music, specific feasts and the festal assemblies of cities exult in it, wars and marches are both aroused and composed through music. It makes sailing and rowing and the most difficult of the handicrafts not burdensome by providing an encouragement for the work.
Recognizing its broad role, he identified (i.5) theoretical and practical subclasses of mousikē, each consisting of various subjects and disciplines (for a diagram see Aristides Quintilianus), ranging from the narrowly technical to the broadly philosophical.
Centuries earlier, such conceptual breadth had enabled Plato, in the Timaeus, to employ music as a cosmological paradigm, but he was also concerned in the Republic and the Laws with practical issues such as the influence of music on behaviour and the types of music that should be allowed in an enlightened civilization. Likewise, in the eighth book of the Politics, Aristotle elaborated on the educational function of music and pointed out its effect in the development of character. The pure phenomena of music attracted the interest of various early philosophical schools, especially the Pythagoreans and another group that came to be known as ‘Harmonicists’ (harmonikoi); within this scientific tradition Aristotle's famous disciple Aristoxenus, in a treatise transmitted under the title Harmonic Elements (Harmonika stoicheia), developed a highly sophisticated system for analysing musical phenomena.
By the 2nd century bce the earlier practical, scientific and philosophical traditions of music were beginning to fade. Even so, for the next several centuries, authors of late antiquity would continue to write treatments of the subject in Greek and Latin. Byzantine and Arabic scholars remained interested in ancient Greek music theory well into the second millennium of the present era, but in the West the music and its theory began to be forgotten after the time of Boethius and Cassiodorus, leaving only faint and imperfect echoes in later treatises.
When Renaissance humanists began to rediscover the cultural treasures of antiquity, they were intrigued by the legendary powers and quality of the music of ancient Greece but were frustrated by the difficulties in recapturing the music of an earlier time. The humanists were also hampered by the absence of notated pieces of music, by incomplete or imperfect manuscripts of texts they wished to read, and by a limited knowledge and understanding of other valuable pieces of evidence, iconographic and archaeological.
In the 17th and 18th centuries more of the theoretical and literary sources that speak of ancient Greek music began to circulate in published form. The most important of these publications was Marcus Meibom's Antiquae musicae auctores septem (Amsterdam, 1652), an edition of seven Greek treatises with parallel translations in Latin, a book of some 800 pages. This edition complemented Athanasius Kircher's famous Musurgia universalis (Rome, 1650), and both influenced John Wallis's 1682 and 1699 editions of two treatises Meibom had not included in his collection: the Harmonics (Harmonika) of Ptolemy and Porphyry's commentary on it. These substantial technical publications provided 18th-century scholars with a wealth of material that appealed to their antiquarian and historical interests, while also supplying evidence for arguments about the purpose and meaning of music. L.C. Mizler von Kolof and Johann Mattheson, for example, drew on ostensibly divergent trends in the Greek sources to bolster their own aesthetic differences, while historians such as F.W. Marpurg, G.B. Martini and Sir John Hawkins tried to develop coherent historical surveys.
Greater control of the literary sources was accomplished during the 19th century, and the discovery of a fair amount of music notated on stone and papyrus and in manuscripts excited renewed debate about the value of ancient Greek music and the prospect of understanding its legendary powers. With the publication during the 20th century of new critical texts, catalogues of manuscripts, and an enormous quantity of critical studies, scholars continued to build on these earlier foundations.
It is impossible to reconstruct every detail of the music of the ancient Greeks, but a broad range of source material provides a good deal of information. Four principal types of sources are available for the study of ancient Greek music and music theory: literature, works of graphic or plastic art, archaeological remains, and notated pieces of music. No single class of source material is sufficient to present a complete picture; each gains in relation to the others, and only when viewed as a complex do they begin to reveal the richness and vitality of mousikē.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
προς επεξεργασία :
‘music’
mousikē
On Music (Peri mousikēs), Aristides Quintilianus (fl late 3rd century – 4th century ce)
diagram, Aristides Quintilianus
Plato, in the Timaeus
Republic
Laws
Politics, Aristotle
educational function of music
Pythagoreans
‘Harmonicists’ (harmonikoi)
Aristoxenus
Harmonic Elements (Harmonika stoicheia)
Latin. Byzantine and Arabic scholars
Boethius
Cassiodorus
Renaissance humanists
Marcus Meibom's Antiquae musicae auctores septem (Amsterdam, 1652)
Athanasius Kircher's famous Musurgia universalis (Rome, 1650),
John Wallis's 1682
the Harmonics (Harmonika) of Ptolemy and Porphyry's commentary
L.C. Mizler von Kolof
Johann Mattheson,
F.W. Marpurg
G.B. Martini
Sir John Hawkins