Critical and Historical Essays / Lectures delivered at Columbia University

h we associate with the ancient Greek singers was only used for a few preluding notes-possibly to pitch the voice of the bard-and not during the chant itself. For whatever

tyls and spondees, the line always ending with a spondee. Really the line should end with

n voice, at least the rhythm of the chants would be well defined, owing to the hexameter in which the latter were written. Here again, however, we are cast adrift by theory, for in practice nothing co

p, and her kirtle of

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torms, on the north were t

the same musical rhythm we are very far from t

ending wi

in music are two different things, althou

of "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" constituted what was really the "vocal" music of the poems. With the Greeks the word "music" (mousiké) included all the ?sthetic culture that formed part of the education of youth; in the same general way a poet

declamation and stage action. It is well known that at the Dionysian Festival it was to the poet as "chorus master" that the prize was awarded, so entirely were the arts identified one with the other. That declamation may often reach the power of music, it is hardly necessary to say. Among modern poets, let any one, for instance, look

lapping o

ipple washing

t he throws it,

s in the splend

d and round, and

reamer of the

d fell the br

all the clangour of cr-ck, the slipping s's too, and the vowel a is used in all its changes; when the shore is finally reached, the verse suddenl

re the

is harness in

sms, and all t

liff clang'd roun

ts of slippery

with the dint

dden, lo! t

glories of th

the protagonist or solitary performer, and the chorus, the latter keeping up a rhythmic motion with the words. Thi

were in use. It would be interesting to pass in review the tragedies of ?schylus and Sophocles, the odes of Sappho and Pindar, those of the latter

o Pythagoras, at Crotona, in Italy (about 500 B.C.), whom we find already laying dow

ophocles, Sappho, Pindar, Phidias, and Herodotus as contemporaries-and this list might be vastly extended-it seems as if some strange wave of ideality had poured over mankind. In Greece, however, Pythagoras's theory of metempsychosis (doctrine of the supposed

lyre, from having four strings, was developed by Terpander, victor in the first musical contest at the feast of Apollo Carneius, into an i

of the poet Pindar (himself the son of a Theban flute player), introduced into lyre playing the runs

catching it with his feet off the ground; and then changing, they flung the ball from one to the other with such rapidity that it made the onlookers dizzy. During the play, Demidocus chanted a song, and accompanied the dance with his lyre, the players never losing a step.

Cretans had six varieties o

h the others were made; but the others were called p?ons. The "Hymn to Apollo" was

as also the chief dance of the Locrians, the step being called anap?st. From Ionia came the two long and two short steps, , , or , which were called Ionic feet. The Doric steps consisted primarily of a trochee and a spondee, or time. These

rom which tragedy and comedy developed, and the mad bacchanalian dances were tamed into dithyrambs. For the Corybantes, priests of the goddess Cybele, brought from Phrygia, in Asia Minor, the darker form of this worship; they mourned for the death of Bacchus, who was supposed to die in winter and to come to life again in the spring. When these mournful hymns were sung, a goat was sacrificed on the altar; thus the origin of the word "tragedy" or "goat

, as we understand the term. Sophocles (495–406 B.C.) followed, inc

om the spring and summer worship of Bacchus, whe

to the dance and therefore a new element into poetry, for all dan

anied the dithyramb, associated with all kinds of harsh, clashing instruments, such as cymbals, tambourines, castanets. These Arion tried to replace by the more dignified Grecian lyre; but it was long before this mad dance sobered down to regu

and silver; in their houses they had wine cellars which contained three hundred vats, each holding a hundred hogsheads of wine. In Sybaris this luxury reached its height, for the Sybarites would not allow any trade which caused a disagreeable sound, such as that of the blacksmith, carpenter, or mason, to be carried on in their

ance, the p?onic or 3 to 2, = ; the iambic or 2 to 1, = ; dactylic or 2 to 2, = . The master of the feast decided the ratio, and a flute girl played a prescribed melody while the toast to good fortune, which commenced every banquet, was being drunk. By the time the last note had sounded, the great cup should have gone

with the lyre to prevent the latter appealing directly to the senses. The dance was corrected in the same manner; for when we speak of Greek dances, we always mean choric dances. Perhaps the nearest approach to the effect of what we call musi

tinct. Then, in place of the dead ashes of art, the cold fire of science arose; for we have such men as Euclid (300 B.C.) and his school applying mathematics to musical sounds, and a system of cold calculation to an art that had needed all the warmth of emotional enthusiasm to keep it alive. Thus music became a

with Agrigentum, Sybaris, and Tarentum in luxury; its chief magistrate wore purple garments, a golden crown upon his head, and white shoes on his feet. It was said of Pythagoras that he had studied twelve years with the Magi in the temples of Babylon; had lived among the Druids of Gaul and the Indian Brahmins; had gone among the priests of

, so the story goes, he obtained the knowledge of harmonics or overtones, namely, the fundamental, octave, fifth, third, etc. This legend, which is stated seriously in many histories of music, is absurd, for, as we know, the hammers would not have vibrated. The anvils would have given the sound, but in order to produce the octa

ger interval than our modern one, and the minor third smaller. Thus thirds did not sound well together, in fact were dissonances, the only intervals which did harmonize being the fourth, fifth, and octave. This system of mathematically dividing tones

ixth) among the harmonizing intervals or consonants. Didymus (about 30 B.C.) first discovered that two different-sized whole tones were necessary in order to make the third consonant; and Ptolemy (120 A.D.) improved on this system somewhat. But the new theory remained without any practical effect until nearly the seventeenth century, when the long respected

nd so it was with Greek music, which was held subordinate to metre, to poetry, to acting, and finally became a term of contempt. Pythagoras wished to banish the flute, as Plato also did later, and the name of flute player was used as a reproach. I fancy this was because the flute, on account of its construction, could ignore the mathematical divisions prescribed

so on, so the melodies to which they were danced were known as being in the Lydian, Ionian, Locrian, or Dorian scale or mode. In speaking of Hindu music, I explained that what we call a mode consists of a scale, and that one mode differs from another only in the position of the semitones in this scale. Now in ancient Greece there were in use over fifteen

ified, martial character. The Lydian, on the other hand, was all softness, and love songs were written in it. The Phrygian was of a violent, ecstatic nature, and was considered as being especially appropriate for dithyrambs, the metre for the wild bacchanalian dances. For i

led tetrachords, probably derived from the ancient form of the

might be pitched high or low, just as our major or minor scale may be pi

one commencing with a tone, followed by a half-tone, and again a tone, constituted a Phrygian tetrachord. The other modes

ss to Doric, not to pitch. Aristoxenus denies the identity, and says that the Hypodorian was a semitone below the Dori

es occur between the fourth an

Lydian (A? major scale) modes we have already explained. In the Mixolydian, t

rmonics," second book, and Aristides), these were approximat

all should be represented and yet not be complicated by what we should call accide

ng a Dorian tetrachord on it, B C D E were acquired. Adding to this another Dorian tetrachord, E F G A (commencing on the last note of the first), and repeating the same series of tetrachords an octave higher, we have in all four Dori

an mode, and was called the Lydian octave; from the third note, D, up to its octave gives the Phrygian; from the fourth note, E, the Dorian; from the fifth, F, the Hypolydian; from the sixth, G, the Hypophrygian; and from the seventh, A, the ?olian or Hypodorian octave. Add one note to the lower end of this

e first of another similar system. Thus, considering the second tetrachord, E F G A, as first of the new scale, it would be followed by A B? C D, and the two disjunct tetrachords would be formed. Followed by the two upper conjunct tetrachords, and the proslambanómenos added, our system on a new pitch would be complete.

TES IN THE

nts were sometimes tuned differently, either to relieve the inevitable monotony of this purely diatonic scale or for purposes of modulation. A Dorian tetra

tones. Besides this, even in the diatonic, the Greeks used what they called soft intervals; for example, when the tetrachord, instead of proceeding by semitone, tone, tone (which system was called t

sessed any, is evident from the fact that these note characters, which at first were derived from the signs of the zodiac, and later from the letters of the alphabet, indicate only the relative pitch of the sounds; the rhythm is left e

em but little is known,

ll that exists, and that the world subsists by the rhythmical order of its elements. The doctrine of the "Harmony of the spheres" was based on the idea that

e same as the