Periods of Greek Music

In considering the entire history of Greek music it is convenient to divide it into three periods.

The first of these extending from 1000 B.C to 660 B.C., is largely mythical, and is valuable only in showing the general status of the art. The power of music at this time is considered immense, as is shown by the story of Orpheus, who attracted rocks and stones by his playing, and of Amphion, who built Thebes to the sound of his lyre. The lyre, invented by Hermes, afterwards becomes an attribute of Apollo, who flays alive Marsyas, the flute player, for daring to contest with him musical supremacy. Homer (cr. 950 B.C.) asserted that music could arouse the deepest emotions; and heroic poetry was recited by the bards to the accompaniment of the lyre. The Pythian games, also, founded about 1000 B.C., introduced musical contests as an important feature.

The second period, extending to the Macedonian conquest, 338 B.C., was begun by the impetus given to music through the opening of intercourse with Egypt, in 660 B.C., and was marked by the union of music and poetry with instrumental accompaniment. The first important musician of the epoch was Terpander, the Spartan, who increased the four strings of the lyre to seven, improved notation, and founded the Lesbian school, which included the musician Arion, and the poets Alcaeus and Sappho. Arion, to whom is atritued the invention of the dithyramb, or Bacchanalian song, was the subject of a mythical tale in which his music caused the dolphins to save him from drowning. Pythagoras (d. about 500 B.C.), a noted theorist and philosopher, added an eighth string to the lyre, and investigated musical intervals by the aid of a one-stringed instrument called the monochord, as a result of which he systematized the scales, making the octave to consist of the union of a perfect fifth and a perfect fourth.

The most important use of music during this epoch, however, was in connection with that outgrowth of the Bacchic festivals known as the Attic drama, which, with Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, and the comic writer Aristophanes as leaders, flourished in the fifth century B.C. during the golden age of Attic supremacy. While all the dialogue may have been musically intoned, the chief use of music was in connection with the chorus, which, varying in numbers, sung while marching or dancing around the altar, to an accompaniment of lyres and flutes, commenting meanwhile upon the action of the play. Tisias (640-556 B.C.), a noted chorus director, was the originator of chorus forms which afterwards came into conventional use, and which ultimately gave rise to laws still retained in connection with poetry: --the strophe, or turning towards the altar, the antistrophe, or turning in the opposite direction, and the epode, sung after these motions. It was considered an honor to belong to this chorus, whose numbers were recruited from the bet families, and who leaader was also a man of distinction.

The philosophers Plato (d. 347 B.C.) and Aristotle (d. 322 B.C.) exalted the aesthetic, in opposition to the scientific view of music held by Pythagoras, proclaiming its moral influence over youth; and Aristoxenus, pupil of Aristotle, left an important musical treatise on the latter's doctrines. Late in this period Asiatic characteristics appeared in the enlargement and varied makeup of instruments, and in the rise of instrumental virtuosi.

The third period extends beyond the Roman conquest, 146 B.C., and into the first centuries of the Christian era. it was marked by a degenerate taste for virtuosity. Several serious writers, such as Plutarch (1st century A.D.) and Alypios (4th century), left enlightening works.