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Ancient Greek Music

Orpheus playing the Lyra
The Story of Orpheus and Euridice

Ancient Greek Music
Ancient Greek Instruments
Vocal music
Music In Drama
Our Ancient Music Reacreations

Ancient Greek Music

Music was important to ancient Greek culture, although little written music has survived. In every play the story was in poetic form and the text was always sung with soloists and choruses. The singing was accompanied by instruments, and the actors on stage would also sing and play instruments.

Most Greek men trained to play an instrument competently, and to sing and perform choral dances. Instrumental music or the singing of a hymn regularly accompanied everyday activities and formal acts of worship. Shepherds piped to their flocks, oarsmen and infantry kept time to music, and women made music at home. The art of singing to one's own stringed accompaniment was highly developed.

Ancient Greek philosophers, especially Pythagoras and his followers, felt music could either heal or harm, and actually change mental and physical reality. The same mathematical relationships that form beauty in Nature and Art make music attractive and beautiful too. This is known as the Golden Mean. These mathematical proportions can be used to analyze the great music of history - especially that of Mozart.

Music was a vital part of religious ceremonies and for social rituals like weddings, funerals, and banquets. The cults of Apollo and Dionysus had their own distinctive music and instruments. Only about 45 musical pieces have survived.

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Ancient Greek Instruments

The types of instruments played by the ancient Greeks have been found from pictures on pottery. These instruments were the aulos which had a double-reed and two pipes and the syrinx which was a single-reed pipe. There were various kinds of Lyres or stringed instruments. One of these was the Phorminx. Greeks also had different kinds of horns made of metal or animal horn, and percussion instruments such as drums, the krotala which was a hollow wood castanet, and kumbala or finger cymbals.

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Phorminx

The phorminx was the main instrument in Ancient Greece. The phorminx was a lyre to accompany poets, or singers. The first musician to play the phorminx was Terpander, in the seventh century B.C.

Aulos

The aulos is the Ancestor of the oboe. It was made of two pipes with a reed on the end. It is said to be invented by Ardalus the son of Hephaistus. It was very tiring to play correctly, and a leather strap was made to fit around the mouth and head to relieve the cheek muscles. The aulos was used as a military musical instrument by the Spartans.

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Ancient Greek Vocal Music

Plato described songs as a mixture of word, rhythm, and melody. The music was monophonic, or simple improvised melody. It is likely the melody was never the same twice. Concerning vocal music, Aristotle said melodic voices are only found in creatures with souls.

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Music In Drama

http://classics.uc.edu/music/yale/index.html

To learn more about Ancient Greek drama, click here.

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Our Music Recreations:

Why did we use chords in our attempts at recreating Ancient Greek music? The prevailing opinion among musicologists is that the oldest Greek music was melody without rhythm or harmony (the three elements or building blocks of all music).

The Homeric Singing website is based on the melody-only concept, and it holds that the melody was likely improvised and never the same twice. The Homoecumenicus website re-creates ancient music with chordal harmony.

Our viewpoint is that even with the four-stringed harp, it is hard to imagine that chords were never, or even accidentally struck. Voice with harp is harmony in and of itself. The ancient Greeks led and innovated in so many other areas especially in geometric mathematics. Pythagoras, who played the harp and sang, experimented with plucked strings discovering the relationships of the octave, fifth, and fourth. These intervals are the basis of chordal music.

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Syrinx

Lyres

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Ancient Greek Music

Orpheus playing the Lyra The Story of Orpheus and Euridice

Ancient Greek Music

Music was important to ancient Greek culture, although little written music has survived. In every play the story was in poetic form and the text was always sung with soloists and choruses. The singing was accompanied by instruments, and the actors on stage would also sing and play instruments.

Music was a vital part of religious ceremonies and for social rituals like weddings, funerals, and banquets. The cults of Apollo and Dionysus had their own distinctive music and instruments. Only about 45 musical pieces have survived.

Ancient Greek Instruments

Phorminx

The phorminx was the main instrument in Ancient Greece. The phorminx was a lyre to accompany poets, or singers. The first musician to play the phorminx was Terpander, in the seventh century B.C.

Aulos

Ancient Greek Vocal Music

Plato described songs as a mixture of word, rhythm, and melody. The music was monophonic, or simple improvised melody. It is likely the melody was never the same twice. Concerning vocal music, Aristotle said melodic voices are only found in creatures with souls.

Music In Drama

To learn more about Ancient Greek drama, click here.

Our Music Recreations:

Syrinx

Lyres

Orpheus playing the Lyra
The Story of Orpheus and Euridice