The truth is that the founders of Athens, and Argos, and other great cities, were leaders of bands of military adventurers, and these when they left Egypt took with them the common popular music such as themselves and their families had been accustomed to, they had no need or use for any other; we should not expect of them that they would represent the musical culture of the motherland, already so highly developed. Hence the simple tetrachord of ages past, produced upon their reed pipes, satisfied them for all that they sought, it was their system of music, and had not been extended. In the early state of the music of the Greeks there had been a double influence, the Egyptian influence, and the older Asiatic influence, both as I imagine proceeding from the same Mesopotamian source in a remote age.
We have to remember that there was a prehistoric Greece and an older Mycenœan Greece. Of Athens, we should say “the refounding,” for there had been five “Athens,” each city built upon the ruins of a former one. “Athens,” says Mr. H. R. Hall in his book, “The oldest civilization of Greece, has existed as an inhabited place from the earliest post-neolithic times, perhaps before 2500 B.C. to the present day,” a fact that may be very usefully recognised, it bears with it an important value, reminding us that an immigrant people almost invariably displaces earlier peoples, or absorbs them. Might ruled then, as now.
In the realms of myth and legend the chief progenitors of music appear; Pan and Apollo, Mercury, Athene, and others; then tradition brings forward many names of poet-musicians who, it cannot be doubted, veritably existed in the flesh. Certain dates do not seem to be questioned, although they are prior to the Trojan War, which is supposed to have taken place between the periods 1500 and 1200 B.C. Homer himself being given a date about 900 B.C. In musical history as generally found, little is noted before Terpander 700-650 B.C., and it is assumed that up to his time only a four-stringed lyre had been in use by the Greeks; it is as if there had been averred a stagnation in music for many centuries.
A closer investigation, however, must cause a revision of such a conclusion, and I repeat, it may well be that we should think of Greek music as having had two courses of usage, running parallel, even as in our own history. These are not as opposed but as distinct, the temple or academic music very strictly conservative, and the popular music with its mingled Asiatic influences, inherited, and untrammelled by priests or philosophers. Very naturally it would come to pass that literature occupied itself with the orthodox and academic views and systems of music, even as by learned musicians our ecclesiastical music has been regarded with almost exclusive attention, whilst the old English songs and ballads have, as it were, existed upon sufferance, kept in being by popular feeling and tradition.
If this twofold strain in the origin of Greek music is borne in mind I believe it will solve many difficulties that constantly trouble enquiry, and will reconcile conflicting accounts given by different authorities, for there is very much that is vague even in the originals, and various translators have but added to the confusion, because they in default of understanding the subject, too often became dogmatic upon guesswork.
Tradition comes upon fairly solid ground with Hyagnis about 1506 B.C. and Marsyas his son, and Olympus the elder, his pupils. Musæus the Athenian, 1426 B.C. was taught by Orpheus and was chief of the Elusian mysteries instituted in Greece in honour of Ceres; his hymns were used in the celebrations. Orpheus also taught Thamyris, and Linus, who taught Hercules, and Amphion, and so on. Then there was Thaletes, the poet-musician mentioned by Strabo, whose old pæans Pythagoras loved to sing; he lived about 300 years after the Trojan War. Other names might be recalled but these suffice to shew that amongst the people of the various Greek States the art of music never at any time was without honour and esteem.
The musical system of the Tetrachord having become known to us through the writings of certain Greek philosophers, fragments of which had been preserved by authors of later centuries, has therefore been assigned to the Greeks, and the development of this musical system has been recorded only in their language, yet the origin of it has undoubtedly to be placed long before the time of the Greeks. Possibly with good reason it might be claimed for the primitive Akkadian, as found by him in the finger holes of the simple reed-pipe.
Although there is clear evidence of the early existence of the tetrachord in pipes, the attention of philosophers has always been given to string instruments, pipes having had no share in their regard, possibly because the playing of pipes was a professional art in which good training was necessary, whereas any philosopher could twang strings and discourse upon laws and proportions.
The lyre of Mercury, so tradition asserts, had three strings only, tuned as
e——a——e, or, e——b——e,