1. The beginning of the first Pythic ode of Pindar.
2. Three hymns of Mesomedes (‘To the Muse,’ ‘To Helios,’ and ‘To Nemesis’) discovered by Vincenzo Galilei (see Chap. IX).
3. Some small instrumental exercises, analyzed by Bellermann (1841).
4. The Epitaph of Seikilos (discovered 1883).
5. Two complete Apollo Hymns of the second century B. C., found chiselled in stone in the Athenian treasury at Delphi.
6. A Fragment of the first Stasimon from Euripides’ ‘Orestes’ (found 1892).
The Hymn to the Muse by Mesomedes (No. 2) is reproduced at the end of this article.
This necessarily brief sketch will have acquainted the reader with the most salient facts concerning Greek music—lost as an art, but perpetuated as a science. Many volumes have been written upon the subject, but much more than these facts cannot possibly be adduced except by long and arduous study. For our present purpose may it suffice to convey to the reader that here for the first time music has attained the dignity of an art, with all its æsthetic, emotional and moral significance, with its complicated theory, its sophisticated technique, consciously employed to give pleasure and to uplift the mind of man. Mechanical limitations and peculiar conditions prevented the development of this art in the modern sense, but its theory has without doubt given a definite direction to modern music. Not only the musical teaching of the early church fathers, but the speculations of theorists down to comparatively modern times, and the principles of the Renaissance masters were based on those of the Greeks, however much misunderstood. Perhaps it is not out of place to recall, in conclusion, how modern composers have been inspired by the stories of classic antiquity and beguiled by the music of Greek poetry. Modern music, disconnected from all that may have been the music of the older nations of antiquity, is a lineal descendant of the music of the Greeks.
Hymn to the Muse by Mesomedes.