II
There is little doubt that in the classic period at least music was an essential part of the intellectual equipment of every citizen. It assumed a public importance and received an official recognition from the state which no other people has ever accorded to it. Not only did it form an integral part of religious worship, but it occupied an important position in the great national festivals at which the intellectual accomplishments no less than the physical prowess of all Greece were matched.
The Olympic games, beginning with the year 776 B. C., and taking place regularly every four years in the plain of Alpheious in Elis (Olympia), are the oldest as well as the most famous of these festivals, and as the most comprehensive national celebrations they assumed the greatest importance. All Hellas and the colonies sent spectators and participants in the contests. While music no doubt played a great part in the celebration of the victors, in the sacred sacrifice to Zeus, and in the pageants and dances, an actual contest in music or poetry was never incorporated into the Olympic games. But the Pythic games, which took place at Delphi every nine years, and after 586 B. C. in the third year of every Olympiad, were primarily poetico-musical contests in honor of Apollo. The first day was permanently dedicated to the performance of the famous Nomos Pythicos (of which later). Both the Isthmian games and the Nemeic games, which took place every two years, were likewise closely identified with music.
But besides these great national festivals, which in all amounted to two or three annually, there were a great number of local celebrations, some of which partook of an almost national character by virtue of the great influx of foreign visitors. The Eleusinian mysteries, primarily confined to the initiates, also took on the character of a popular festival by the institution of public contests and pageants, in which, of course, music played a great part. The Athenians’ annual Panatheneas in honor of their patron goddess, their harvest festivals, and their Dionysos festivals; the Spartans’ numerous celebrations and a host of others, all of which were dedicated to some phase of culture, will indicate in some measure the tremendous amount of time and attention which the Greeks gave to the cultivation of the representative arts.
From Polybius, writing in the second century A. D., and taking as his authority Ephorus, writing two hundred years earlier, we learn that the Arcadians ordered their State affairs entirely according to music, in such manner that not only boys, but young men up to the age of thirty were obliged to cultivate musical study continually. ‘From infancy on their children are accustomed to sing according to rule the hymns and pæans with which every country district praises its gods and heroes. Later they learn the melodies of Timotheus and Philoxenos, and annually perform their choral dances in the theatre to the accompaniment of Dionysian flutes—the children their children’s dances, and youths the dances of men. Throughout their whole life they institute performances in this way, not engaging foreign musicians, but relying upon their own talents, and relieving each other in turn in the execution of songs. And while it is not considered a disgrace to plead ignorance in other fields of knowledge, they consider it reprehensible to decline to sing. They also practise processions to the accompaniment of flutes, and annually perform dances which they study together and produce in the theatres at the common expense.’
Not only in the public functions, but in their domestic life as well, did music assume great importance. From earliest times we have records of folk songs associated with the various occupations of ordinary life. Of these the songs which have reference to the seasons of the year and their phenomena, and which express the emotions called forth by them, are of the greatest antiquity. They were sung by country folk, by the reapers and vintners. There were two distinct classes of folk songs, the songs of sorrow and the songs of joy, both of which existed according to Homer before his time. Karl Bücher in his Arbeit und Rhythmus shows that in the occupational songs, where the dance did not form a part of the music, the rhythm of the occupations themselves—the handling of tools—determined the rhythm of the songs. Among such are the song of the miller while grinding, the song of the spinners, the binders of sheaves, and many others. There is no doubt that these songs, expressing in simple terms the sorrows and joys of the ordinary man, had a refreshing influence upon the more sophisticated artistic creations of Greek musicians, just as our folk songs have had upon the works of our greatest composers. The private practice of the more artistic forms was also common among the Greeks. We read in their literature how the lyre was passed round at the banquet, and each guest was expected to add to the merriment of the occasion; of the bridal songs, and many other forms of choral music executed upon special occasions.
Greek flute and kithara players.
Reproduced from a Volcentian vessel.
The actual character of this music we must gather from the writings about it, rather than the few fragments at hand for analysis. Just as music, because of its moral significance, became the subject of philosophic speculation, so did its scientific side appeal to the analytic mind of the Greeks, and their mathematicians and scientists in general expatiated at length upon its theory. From their writings we adduce first of all the fact that Greek music lacked at least one of the important elements of modern music, namely, polyphony—or harmony—the quality which of all, from a modern point of view, appeals most directly to our emotions, to our susceptibility, which is most closely associated with color and ‘mood.’ Investigators, such as Westphal, Gevaert, etc., have untiringly striven to establish evidence of something more than simple homophony in the music of antiquity, but beyond a slight deviation in the instrumental accompaniments, partaking of the nature of grace notes, they have discovered traces of nothing but melody at the unison—or at the distance of an octave, when men and boys (or women) sang together, or when the voice was accompanied by an instrument of higher or lower pitch. Such and nothing more is the import of the testimony of Aristotle, when he says: ‘Why is symphonous or antiphonal singing more pleasing than harmony? Is it not because it is the consonance of the octave? For antiphony is born of the voices of young boys and men, whose tones are equal in distance from each other as is the highest note of an octave from the lowest’ (Problems xix, 29). Curious as it may seem that it should never have occurred to a people intellectually so advanced to venture experiments in the field of polyphony; that it should never have entered their minds to strike two strings of the lyre or kithara simultaneously, or that an occasional false note struck along with the right one should not have suggested the possibilities of the ‘third dimension’ in music, it remains a fact that in all the mass of theoretical and technical writings upon the art sufficient to reconstruct the entire ‘system’ of Greek music, no mention is made of harmony or polyphony.[35] We can only conclude then that combinations other than the perfect consonance of the octave, all mixtures of sounds or a confusion of lines, were hostile to the Greek ideal of purity, to the underlying principle of classic simplicity.
Thus the Greeks, reduced to the resources of rhythm and melody as means of musical expression, developed these to a very high degree, in the fineness of its distinctions advanced even beyond the point which we have as yet found it necessary to reach in modern music. Their rhythm, while no doubt it had a distinct and independent existence, was primarily determined by the accent of the spoken word, the metres of poetry. Even if conceived as a musical entity, it must at all times be thought of as pertaining to the text rather than the melody. The earliest rhythm of which we have knowledge is the hexameter of the Homeric epics, and it is doubtful whether any variety in rhythmic structure was introduced until the introduction of the short iambic measures at a later period. Melody, on the other hand, while subjected to certain laws, and at first perhaps nothing more than a monotonous chant or declamation at slightly varying pitch, finally attained a variety of line and freedom of movement which rendered it capable of the most subtle shades of expression. This, we are informed, was due to a complex system of modes or scales, of genera and chroai, which, if we understand them correctly, would credit the Greek ear with much finer distinctions of pitch than we are capable of to-day.
A full discussion of this system is beyond our present purpose, and the numerous controversies concerning it, which in many respects are still unsettled, place the matter outside the pale of true history; but a brief statement of its development (in historical sequence) is necessary for the comprehension of the terms which must recur in the course of our sketch.