Chapter 1: Music in Ancient Greece and Early Christian Rome

Music in Ancient Greek Life and Thought
  1. Music and Religion
    1. Inseparable to ancient Greeks and Hebrews
    2. Each religious cult was devoted to a particular god or goddess and had its own characteristic musical styles and instruments.
  2. Characteristics of Greek Music (NAWM 1, 2)
    1. Most surviving music comes from relatively late periods and is for voice.
    2. Monophonic texture (melody without harmony or counterpoint)
    3. Heterophony in performance (instrument embellishing on the melody while a soloist or unison ensemble sings the same melody)
    4. Musical rhythm was bound to the rhythm of the poetry.
  3. Instruments of Greek Music
    1. Lyre and kithara (both strummed stringed instruments) used in the worship of Apollo and also for singing or recitation of epic poems
    2. Aulos (single- or double-reed instrument, usually with two pipes) used in the worship of Dionysys and to accompany great tragedies of the classical age
    3. Competitions of solo aulos and lyre players were held as early as 582 B.C.E. and instrumentalists became more virtuosic, eventually developing solo careers as recitalists.
  4. Greek Musical Thought
    1. Some of the concepts formulated by the ancient Greeks continued to influence medieval thinkers and musicians.
    2. Doctrines on the nature of music
      1. Music and number
        1. Pythagoras linked pitch relations (intervals) to numerical ratios.
        2. According to legend Pythagoras discovered this while listening to blacksmiths' hammers.
      2. Union of music and poetry
        1. Melos (song): speech plus rhythm and harmony (i.e., pitches) according to Plato
        2. Types of poetry named for types of song (e.g., hymn)
      3. Doctrine of Ethos (belief that music possessed moral qualities and could affect character and behavior)
        1. Aristotle wrote that music imitates states of the soul (passions) and that listening to the wrong kind of music could warp a person's character (theory of imitation).
        2. Plato and Aristotle both believed that education should include the proper kinds of modes, or styles of melody, to create desirable qualities in citizens.
    3. Descriptions of musical practices
      1. Harmonics: the study of pitch developed by Aristoxenus (ca. 330 B.C.E.) and reworked by Cleonides (ca. 100–400 C.E.)
      2. The tetrachord was the basic building block of musical scales. All tetrachords include four notes spanning a perfect fourth, but each genera (class) of tetrachord has different intervals between the second and third pitches.
      3. Consonances were the fourth, fifth and octave.
  5. The early Christian Church adapted some Greek principles but others were forgotten

 

 

 

© 2002 W. W. Norton & Company

Chapter 1: Music in Ancient Greece and Early Christian Rome

Music in the Early Christian Church

By the fifth century, Christianity was the main unifying force throughout Europe.
  1. Early Christian Writing about Music
    1. Early Christian theologians ("The Church Fathers") on music
      1. Continued the Greek belief in music's power to influence the listener's character (Doctrine of Ethos)
      2. Believed music should serve religion
      3. Musical instruments should be banned from churches because of their pagan uses.
      4. St. Augustine (see vignette) expresses ambivalence about his enjoyment of music for its own sake.
    2. Theoretical writings
      1. Music was one of the Seven Liberal Arts according to Martianus Capella.
        1. Trivium: the three verbal arts (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric)
        2. Quadrivium: the four mathematical arts (geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, harmonics, i.e., music)
      2. Boethius (ca. 480–525) wrote on each of the Liberal Arts.
        1. De institutione musica (Fundamentals of Music) is his book on music.
        2. He summarizes several Greek authors.
        3. His original contribution is the idea of three types of music.
          1. Musica mundana: cosmic music (music of the spheres)
          2. Musica humana: union of the body and soul
          3. Musical instrumentalis: audible music
  2. Parallel between Jewish and Christian practices
    1. Ritual sacrifice
      1. Jewish sacrifice: At the Temple, ritualistic sacrifice of an animal (usually a lamb) was an integral part of worship services. During the sacrifice, professional musicians sang a psalm to instrumental accompaniment.
      2. Christian sacrifice: In the reenactment of Christ's Last Supper, the wine represents Christ's blood, and bread represents his body.
    2. As Christianity spread to other regions it picked up other musical influences.
  3. Regional Differences
    1. In 395 C.E. Christianity split into Eastern (centered in Byzantium, later Constantinople, now Istanbul) and Western (centered in Rome), which had many styles of chant.
    2. Gallican chant (France)
    3. Mozarabic or Visigothic chant (Spanish chant during Moorish occupation)
    4. Old Roman chant developed alongside Gregorian, outside of the Vatican.
    5. Ambrosian, named for St. Ambrose, was centered in Milan and influenced other liturgies to adopt responsorial psalmody.
    6. Sarum use (England)
  4. Gregorian Chant
    1. Named for Pope Gregory II (715–31)
    2. Resulted from reorganization of Roman chant under the direction of Pope Vitalian
    3. The earliest surviving manuscripts were copied for monasteries.
    4. The Schola Cantorum (School of Singers) became Rome's training ground for chant singers (cantors).

 

© 2002 W. W. Norton & Company