On Monday and Tuesday 20th and 21st November a two-day seminar on Ancient Greek Music is being held at the Venizelio Odeio in Chania as part of a series of events associated with the music school’s 100th anniversary. Led by Stelios Psaroudakis, ancient musicologist and professor in the Musical Studies Department of the National Kapodistrian University of Athens, the seminar runs from 18:00 to 21.00 each evening and admission is free. In anticipation of the event, Haniotika Nea interviewed Professor Psaroudakis and asked him some questions as to what is known about the use of music in Ancient Greece, and whether we have any idea of how it actually sounded.
HN – How much do we know about ancient Greek music?
The subject was being studied as far back as 1600, originally in Italy and later chiefly in France and Germany. In Greece it is basically only in recent years that we have begun to involve ourselves with it, and of the four musicological [university] departments which there are in the country only in Athens is the subject being taught.
Also, there is a society based in Ravenna in Italy, where we musicologists who are researching ancient Greek and Roman music meet every year. There may be only a few of us, but there is a lively interest and intense activity amongst its members. I should point out that we also conduct summer schools on ancient music, while there is also a second ancient musicological society in Germany, which however is involved with ancient music from all over the world.
Professor Stelios Psaroudakis, of the National Kapodistrian University of Athens, is conducting a two-day seminar on ancient Greek music at the Venizelio Odeio in Chania on 20th and 21st November.
HN – What are our sources for ancient Greek music, since obviously we don’t have any sound archives?
We have many theoretical dissertations. Already from the 5th century BC, chiefly in Athens, Greek philosophers were preoccupied by the subject of music, they studied it scientifically and took positions on the phenomenon, while they tried to see the components it was made of, i.e. what we call rhythms, scales, pitch etc, and what are the relationships between them. Consequently we have original texts which have survived, chiefly from Aristoxenus in the 4th century BC, which provide us with examples both of melodies and rhythm, and after that up to Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD. There are also theoretical texts of the Byzantines (10th to 13th century AD).
A second source are the 70 or so scores which have survived, of which 4-5 are intact and others fragmentary, written on papyruses or engraved on stone. Already from the 4th century BC the Greeks had created a system of writing down music, so there are recorded melodies. Our third source is from iconography, that is to say representations and illustrations with musical scenes. Finally there is a fourth source which is the scattered references to music in ancient Greek literature. Both Plato himself and Aristotle made frequent references to music.
Unfortunately all that material which had already been located in the previous century and which was the subject of study in Europe, was unknown in Greece until 20 years ago, while only two pages are devoted to the subject in the schoolbook of Secondary Education.
HN – Have we been able to approximate the sounds of that era?
We would like to believe that in some cases we are very close. However we do not know the placement of the voice of the ancients. For example, in music schools they sing in one way and singers in churches in another. There is also the question of the [different] kinds of voice. That is something which we cannot approximate to. The tuning of instruments is another issue.
Although we know things from the theoretical dissertations, the notation which we have does not give us 100 per cent of the information which we need about ancient Greek music. So we have to proceed by way of approximations. In addition we do not have any information about tempo and we don’t know enough about the kinds of accompaniment which were used. Thus we know that there is a lyre and a flute which accompany the voice, but we don’t know the melodic relationship between them.
HN – We know that the ancient philosophers attached particular importance to music. What was the position of music in social life in ancient Greece?
Music was very important during that time both for philosophers and also for the ordinary man. There was music everywhere. There was no activity, whether religious or worldly, which did not include music, and also dance, as the two went hand in hand. Words, music and dance were the basic three elements, and of course there was musical education. Boys went to school for 10 years to learn, amongst other things, music, playing the lyre and the flute, etc. Later, as soldiers they had to learn military dances, such as the Pyrrhic war dance, which was danced with weapons. We also have many dances for girls.
The 5th century BC saw the beginnings of theorising about the influence of music on humans. Not only on a psychological but also on a moral level. Already in the 5th century BC, Damon, who was later cited by Plato as being the supreme authority on the ethics of music, introduced the theory of the moral content of melodies and rhythms. He maintained that certain scales and harmonies, and certain rhythms, have their own character, they have an inherent moral content and when they are expressed the human spirit aligns itself and is influenced by them. So if a rhythm is characterised as bad, or poisonous we might say, then it can also poison the spirit of a human being.
This theory was pursued by Plato and later in the early Christian years up to the Byzantines. Nowadays that theory is not accepted, since contemporary musicologists believe that while music clearly influences our psychology it does not affect us morally. There is not something in rhythms and scales which can corrupt our spirit.
HN – Can we expect more things which will complement our knowledge of ancient Greek music? Is there an expectation that in a few years we will get even closer to the sounds of that era?
Undoubtedly. Every year the archaeologists bring to light ancient instruments – lyres, flutes, harps etc. During the course of my own career many instruments have been found which we are studying, reconstructing and trying to understand how they worked. We expect that to continue. Also research on the sources continues. The more recent studies partly agree with the old interpretations and partly disprove them. So perhaps in the future we will be led to new conclusions which will be irrefutable.
(Haniotika Nea)