LITERATURE

To music lesson

The numerous scenes relating to music teaching emphasize how this is one of the main topics of study for the young aristocrats that from the earliest age are entrusted to a master (kitharistes) that teaches them a vast repertoire of poetic texts performed with the accompaniment of the lira. The invention of this instrument is attributed to the god Hermes (Hymn to Ermes, v. 41 ff.) that builds using as a resonance box a tortoise shell, the animal that until is alive has no voice but as soon as he dies, becomes sound. The Soundbox on which is stretched a skin of ox, are connected two arms supporting a crossbeam; to it are fixed, by means of pegs (kollaboi), the cords, twisted gut, different in number from one epoch to another. The lira is often played with a plectrum plektron () of bone or ivory: on the run mode does not have certain news, but playing it ought not to be very complicated, if it is used to teach music and singing to young aristocrats who then opportunity to exhibit the refinement of its culture especially during the symposium.

“The masters of the grammar and music guide students performing their first song and giving a reading of the text” : this testimony of Plutarch is also reflected in many images in which student and teacher are sitting in front of, each with its own lira in hand. The Learner strives to imitate the example of music performed by maestro, ripetendone melody performed with the lyre and singing. Sometimes also appear tablets to write or rolls of papyrus and in some cases it is also possible in decoding the written text that, at least in the examples come up to us, is never accompanied by musical notation.

It therefore seems that the teaching of singing and instrumental practice is predominantly oral:

the existence of musical notation is widely documented, but his knowledge falls within the competence of the musicians of the profession.

Very rare are the scenes that represent the teaching of the aulos, both because it is attributed the same educational function of lira, being an instrument linked to the sphere dionisiaca and therefore able to arouse passions rather than placarle, both because generally his teaching is intended to musicians of profession. Similar to the modern oboe, the aulos is constituted by a cylindrical tube of wood, cane, bone or ivory, into which is inserted the mouth ending with the reed, a device formed from one or more likely, two sheets of the barrel that serves to amplify the sound.

The auleti usually sounds not one but two barrels, with holes in a variable number from one age to another. Even gymnastics, whose teaching is contemporary or replaces that of music, is an important aspect of the Greek education, understood as culture is the spirit of both body. Young people usually carry out the physical exercises in the gym, under the guidance of a Coach (paidotribes):

the canonical disciplines in which compete are those that are part of the pentathlon, i.e. fight, racing, jumping launch of the disc and the javelin. Some of these, such as long jump, the launch of the disc and the javelin, but also the boxing, sport instead for professional athletes, are practiced in the presence of a auleta that, with the music of the wind instrument, allows athletes to synchronize and give rhythm to better the movements.

Pictures often show them clothes with long dwell richly adorned with the mouth surrounded by phorbeia, a sort of gag in the skin into which are inserted the mouths of auloi and that, allowing to adjust the inlet of the air in the tubes, facilitates the execution.

A melody strongly rhythmic performed with the aulos may facilitate not only the movements of the athletes, but also the gestures of those engaged in heavy manual work as grinding grain, knead bread dough or rowing in a ship.

The music in the symposium and in the gynaeceum

It is particularly during the symposium that aristocrats Greeks sing lyrics is accompanied with the lyre or the barbitos, a type of lira of oriental origin, with the arms longer. Sometimes the painters show the guests while they sing with the head upside down backwards, in the typical attitude of the poetic inspiration, or indicate with a sort of comic strip the text that comes from their mouth. The feast is a time exclusively masculine: the free women do not take part in them and the feminine presence relates exclusively to the professionals, usually suonatrici of aulos (auletrides), but also of crotali (a species of castanets of cylindrical shape), who entertain the guests also with music and dance. The symposium is also the moment of the wine and of the game: sometimes the invited are represented in the front position, to emphasize their drunkenness; or engaged in the game of kottabos, while seeking to strike, with the wine remained in the cups, the suspended target on a lampstand.

The many images that show aristocratic women engaged in musical activities within the gynaeceum, true and own exhibitions that are held exclusively in the domestic environment, suggest that they too receive a refined education that includes music and poetry.

The symposium is one of the main contexts of ancient Greek music and poetry born there is not conceivable without music. But if we know the tools, the shapes and the dynamics of the execution, we know nothing of the melodic lines originating: the only way to save them, writing music, is yes known to the Greeks, but only in certain professional classes, distant in time and culture from the usual frequenters of the symposia, still tied to a way of oral communication and an approach to music amateur.

The music in the Symposium

Among the many cultural content, social, literary that make the symposium a central institution of civilization Greek literary, that of music is one of the most important and at the same time of the less known.

Contributes to this state of things the characteristic invisibility of the testimonies of music, especially those simposiali: for a number of reasons historical-cultural often not clearly can be reconstructed – and which has a central role to the patient work of finding all the literary heritage known curated by Alexandrian Philology – we possess at least in part the texts of the greater poets simposiali tradition Greek lyric poetry; on the contrary, we have no remains of the musics corresponding, for reasons linked on the one hand to the fact that makes the musical writing a technical professionalism very specifically, on the other hand to the comparatively recent date which we must make to trace the diffusion in the Greek world. In essence, if already the older phases of the history of lyric poetry greek belongs a type of sensitivity that, albeit in a context totally oral, has nevertheless left space to forms of conservation of the written text and that has contributed to the salvation of the word poetics, the same can not be said for the music, equally bound to oral tradition, but not a practice scrittoria widespread and developed, so even if the poets of the greek Symposium are also always musicians, of their melodies we can not know nothing and their vocal songs remains only the nude text.

In reality, the problem of non-written conservation of music involves multiple factors and also affects eras of very subsequent to the diffusion of musical writing itself: it is precisely the symposium that, on the basis of the testimony in our possession, seems to be regarded as one of the places that most oppose resistance to new medium.

Even if the main vector of the musical tradition of any scope it is, remains the oral one, there are contexts in which it seems that the writing is gradually inserted: the reasons of the isolation of the symposium are in its size, at least formally, private. This is a place in which find themselves among friends, make poetry (and then music), stay away from the size more technique and in which the protagonists of executions do not belong to the professional categories which, against it is plausible to attribute the use of musical scriptures, especially in the steps subsequent to the archaic age.

When we speak of the symposium is in fact always appropriate to avoid confusing periods and historical phases are very different from each other: from the point of view of historical, social and literary, the most important step is the archaic (roughly VII-V century B.C.), but we rich testimonies which also affect the subsequent centuries, from what we know, for example, of great changes in the lists of songs performed.

The instruments of music at the Symposium

The testimonies concerning the instruments, literary and iconographic, indicate some that seem “specialized” for use at the symposium, but in general it is always good to follow a certain amount of caution in attributing to these instruments exclusively this scope, that as private and non-professional, is not regulated by fixed parameters.

The largest number of instruments belongs to the family of cordofoni: the lira, instrument “basic” the musical formation of every member of an aristocratic family Greek, which does not require a technical preparation highly specialised, constitutes the instrument from a symposium for excellence, with which the great poets and anonymous simposiasti accompany their song (the ancient technique does not provide an accompaniment comparable to modern, for agreements, but a doubling of the melody, perhaps in prevalence in unison, even if there are literary testimonies of a practice of an accompanying “eterofonico” to hand).

A use connected to the wind area, and in particular on the island of Lesbos, sees a central role assigned to the barbitos, a particular type of lira from the longer suspension arms and the sound more serious: the fabulous depictions of Alceo and Sappho clutching this tool and perform their songs are worth more than any speech to illustrate the centrality of music in their art and within their contexts simposiali ritual or their specific. The case of barbitos is also useful to illustrate the phenomenon of continuous interchange between simposiali groups belonging to different places of the greek world archaic: this explains the fact that the invention of the tool see called into question now Terpandro Lesvos now Anacreon Teo. From this as many other cases emerge continuous signals of mutual contacts between the Community belonging to areas even distant between them; contacts that determine the exchange of knowledge and technical innovations, whether they are new tools or new poetic forms. Considerable emphasis also have various representatives of the family of harps (in particular the sambyke and trigonon), that some ancient sources attribute insistently to simposiale context, both as accompanying instruments of the poet singer, both because used by those women who very often tended the musical entertainment (and not only) The simposiasti.

To music lesson

The numerous scenes relating to music teaching emphasize how this is one of the main topics of study for the young aristocrats that from the earliest age are entrusted to a master (kitharistes) that teaches them a vast repertoire of poetic texts performed with the accompaniment of the lira. The invention of this instrument is attributed to the god Hermes (Hymn to Ermes, v. 41 ff.) that builds using as a resonance box a tortoise shell, the animal that until is alive has no voice but as soon as he dies, becomes sound. The Soundbox on which is stretched a skin of ox, are connected two arms supporting a crossbeam; to it are fixed, by means of pegs (kollaboi), the cords, twisted gut, different in number from one epoch to another. The lira is often played with a plectrum plektron () of bone or ivory: on the run mode does not have certain news, but playing it ought not to be very complicated, if it is used to teach music and singing to young aristocrats who then opportunity to exhibit the refinement of its culture especially during the symposium.

“The masters of the grammar and music guide students performing their first song and giving a reading of the text” : this testimony of Plutarch is also reflected in many images in which student and teacher are sitting in front of, each with its own lira in hand. The Learner strives to imitate the example of music performed by maestro, ripetendone melody performed with the lyre and singing. Sometimes also appear tablets to write or rolls of papyrus and in some cases it is also possible in decoding the written text that, at least in the examples come up to us, is never accompanied by musical notation.

It therefore seems that the teaching of singing and instrumental practice is predominantly oral:

the existence of musical notation is widely documented, but his knowledge falls within the competence of the musicians of the profession.

Very rare are the scenes that represent the teaching of the aulos, both because it is attributed the same educational function of lira, being an instrument linked to the sphere dionisiaca and therefore able to arouse passions rather than placarle, both because generally his teaching is intended to musicians of profession. Similar to the modern oboe, the aulos is constituted by a cylindrical tube of wood, cane, bone or ivory, into which is inserted the mouth ending with the reed, a device formed from one or more likely, two sheets of the barrel that serves to amplify the sound.

The auleti usually sounds not one but two barrels, with holes in a variable number from one age to another. Even gymnastics, whose teaching is contemporary or replaces that of music, is an important aspect of the Greek education, understood as culture is the spirit of both body. Young people usually carry out the physical exercises in the gym, under the guidance of a Coach (paidotribes):

the canonical disciplines in which compete are those that are part of the pentathlon, i.e. fight, racing, jumping launch of the disc and the javelin. Some of these, such as long jump, the launch of the disc and the javelin, but also the boxing, sport instead for professional athletes, are practiced in the presence of a auleta that, with the music of the wind instrument, allows athletes to synchronize and give rhythm to better the movements.

Pictures often show them clothes with long dwell richly adorned with the mouth surrounded by phorbeia, a sort of gag in the skin into which are inserted the mouths of auloi and that, allowing to adjust the inlet of the air in the tubes, facilitates the execution.

A melody strongly rhythmic performed with the aulos may facilitate not only the movements of the athletes, but also the gestures of those engaged in heavy manual work as grinding grain, knead bread dough or rowing in a ship.

The music in the symposium and in the gynaeceum

It is particularly during the symposium that aristocrats Greeks sing lyrics is accompanied with the lyre or the barbitos, a type of lira of oriental origin, with the arms longer. Sometimes the painters show the guests while they sing with the head upside down backwards, in the typical attitude of the poetic inspiration, or indicate with a sort of comic strip the text that comes from their mouth. The feast is a time exclusively masculine: the free women do not take part in them and the feminine presence relates exclusively to the professionals, usually suonatrici of aulos (auletrides), but also of crotali (a species of castanets of cylindrical shape), who entertain the guests also with music and dance. The symposium is also the moment of the wine and of the game: sometimes the invited are represented in the front position, to emphasize their drunkenness; or engaged in the game of kottabos, while seeking to strike, with the wine remained in the cups, the suspended target on a lampstand.

The many images that show aristocratic women engaged in musical activities within the gynaeceum, true and own exhibitions that are held exclusively in the domestic environment, suggest that they too receive a refined education that includes music and poetry.

The symposium is one of the main contexts of ancient Greek music and poetry born there is not conceivable without music. But if we know the tools, the shapes and the dynamics of the execution, we know nothing of the melodic lines originating: the only way to save them, writing music, is yes known to the Greeks, but only in certain professional classes, distant in time and culture from the usual frequenters of the symposia, still tied to a way of oral communication and an approach to music amateur.

The music in the Symposium

Among the many cultural content, social, literary that make the symposium a central institution of civilization Greek literary, that of music is one of the most important and at the same time of the less known.

Contributes to this state of things the characteristic invisibility of the testimonies of music, especially those simposiali: for a number of reasons historical-cultural often not clearly can be reconstructed – and which has a central role to the patient work of finding all the literary heritage known curated by Alexandrian Philology – we possess at least in part the texts of the greater poets simposiali tradition Greek lyric poetry; on the contrary, we have no remains of the musics corresponding, for reasons linked on the one hand to the fact that makes the musical writing a technical professionalism very specifically, on the other hand to the comparatively recent date which we must make to trace the diffusion in the Greek world. In essence, if already the older phases of the history of lyric poetry greek belongs a type of sensitivity that, albeit in a context totally oral, has nevertheless left space to forms of conservation of the written text and that has contributed to the salvation of the word poetics, the same can not be said for the music, equally bound to oral tradition, but not a practice scrittoria widespread and developed, so even if the poets of the greek Symposium are also always musicians, of their melodies we can not know nothing and their vocal songs remains only the nude text.

In reality, the problem of non-written conservation of music involves multiple factors and also affects eras of very subsequent to the diffusion of musical writing itself: it is precisely the symposium that, on the basis of the testimony in our possession, seems to be regarded as one of the places that most oppose resistance to new medium.

Even if the main vector of the musical tradition of any scope it is, remains the oral one, there are contexts in which it seems that the writing is gradually inserted: the reasons of the isolation of the symposium are in its size, at least formally, private. This is a place in which find themselves among friends, make poetry (and then music), stay away from the size more technique and in which the protagonists of executions do not belong to the professional categories which, against it is plausible to attribute the use of musical scriptures, especially in the steps subsequent to the archaic age.

When we speak of the symposium is in fact always appropriate to avoid confusing periods and historical phases are very different from each other: from the point of view of historical, social and literary, the most important step is the archaic (roughly VII-V century B.C.), but we rich testimonies which also affect the subsequent centuries, from what we know, for example, of great changes in the lists of songs performed.

The instruments of music at the Symposium

The testimonies concerning the instruments, literary and iconographic, indicate some that seem “specialized” for use at the symposium, but in general it is always good to follow a certain amount of caution in attributing to these instruments exclusively this scope, that as private and non-professional, is not regulated by fixed parameters.

The largest number of instruments belongs to the family of cordofoni: the lira, instrument “basic” the musical formation of every member of an aristocratic family Greek, which does not require a technical preparation highly specialised, constitutes the instrument from a symposium for excellence, with which the great poets and anonymous simposiasti accompany their song (the ancient technique does not provide an accompaniment comparable to modern, for agreements, but a doubling of the melody, perhaps in prevalence in unison, even if there are literary testimonies of a practice of an accompanying “eterofonico” to hand).

A use connected to the wind area, and in particular on the island of Lesbos, sees a central role assigned to the barbitos, a particular type of lira from the longer suspension arms and the sound more serious: the fabulous depictions of Alceo and Sappho clutching this tool and perform their songs are worth more than any speech to illustrate the centrality of music in their art and within their contexts simposiali ritual or their specific. The case of barbitos is also useful to illustrate the phenomenon of continuous interchange between simposiali groups belonging to different places of the greek world archaic: this explains the fact that the invention of the tool see called into question now Terpandro Lesvos now Anacreon Teo. From this as many other cases emerge continuous signals of mutual contacts between the Community belonging to areas even distant between them; contacts that determine the exchange of knowledge and technical innovations, whether they are new tools or new poetic forms. Considerable emphasis also have various representatives of the family of harps (in particular the sambyke and trigonon), that some ancient sources attribute insistently to simposiale context, both as accompanying instruments of the poet singer, both because used by those women who very often tended the musical entertainment (and not only) The simposiasti.

In fact the music of the symposium is not only that composed and sung by guests: it is also that of the background, Entertainment insured during the convivial. Often the instrument of this music is the aulos, that, in addition to being one of the tools most representative of musical culture in ancient Greek, is in turn traditionally associated with a poetic form which is also typical of the symposium as the Elegia, wherein the poetic text, probably not sung, but executed in a form of recitativo, was indeed supported by the aulos.

The rest, until it seeks to define the scope of the relevance of the instruments in use to simposiasti, the ranks of the possibility seems quite defined between the lira, barbitos, harps and aulos (with all possible integrations that the irregularity of the documentation in our possession glimpse); if instead we must try to rebuild the marginal context and still more elusive entertainment and background music, the situation is becoming extremely uncertain, and potentially every form of tool can access them: there are no rules or limits or in one case or the other.

It is above all the music that women of ancient Greece shall participate in the culture, both as performers (singers, dancers, suonatrici instruments) or, more rarely, as educators and composers. The contexts in which they are listed are mainly those of the symposium and the ritual ceremony. The exceptional is the presence of composers, none of which of those we know was born and work in Athens, in confirmation of the attitude of mistrust that this city has always nourished against women.

To Aristosseno of Taranto, peripatetico Philosopher, it is traditionally attributed to the birth of a scientific study of music and its constituent components (melodic and rhythmic sounds), for the first time investigated systematically and with the methodological criteria explicitly declared.

The scientific study of music

If, in the Greek world, a theoretical reflection on the music is testified already between V and IV century B.C., the author with which it is traditionally coincide with the birth of a study “scientific” of musical grammar is Aristosseno, native of Taranto, whose activity is mainly in Athens in the second half of the IV century B.C. Aristosseno is philosopher of Pythagorean formation which soon becomes one of the students more prominent Aristotle to Peripato, much to hope to succeed him in the direction of the school (will instead preferred – with its great disappointment – Theophrastus). This training is essential to understand his approach “dynamic” to the study of music, perceived as an element of nature in perpetual motion/change and therefore as a potential subject for analysis by a theoretical science (theoretike episteme) that, as a “physical” Aristotelian (the discipline that, according to Aristotle, studying the elements in the process of becoming the real), observed, or better to say, perceived with the ear the musical phenomena (rhythms and melodies) products in reality fenomenica and ne astragga, induction, the constituent structures intrinsic (such as rhythmic patterns and intervallari). Once abstract principles (archai) that are at the basis of the constitution of these structures, is then for Aristosseno can go to demonstrate (apodeiknymi) in a timely manner the laws that govern the wonderful “order” (thaumaste taxis) of music. As in the aristotelian conception, observation and demonstration are complementary phases of a process integrated scientific, whose application to the musical field applies to philosopher tarantino the fame of musical theorist more famous of antiquity.

The harmonic science and space sound

In fact the music of the symposium is not only that composed and sung by guests: it is also that of the background, Entertainment insured during the convivial. Often the instrument of this music is the aulos, that, in addition to being one of the tools most representative of musical culture in ancient Greek, is in turn traditionally associated with a poetic form which is also typical of the symposium as the Elegia, wherein the poetic text, probably not sung, but executed in a form of recitativo, was indeed supported by the aulos.

The rest, until it seeks to define the scope of the relevance of the instruments in use to simposiasti, the ranks of the possibility seems quite defined between the lira, barbitos, harps and aulos (with all possible integrations that the irregularity of the documentation in our possession glimpse); if instead we must try to rebuild the marginal context and still more elusive entertainment and background music, the situation is becoming extremely uncertain, and potentially every form of tool can access them: there are no rules or limits or in one case or the other.

It is above all the music that women of ancient Greece shall participate in the culture, both as performers (singers, dancers, suonatrici instruments) or, more rarely, as educators and composers. The contexts in which they are listed are mainly those of the symposium and the ritual ceremony. The exceptional is the presence of composers, none of which of those we know was born and work in Athens, in confirmation of the attitude of mistrust that this city has always nourished against women.

To Aristosseno of Taranto, peripatetico Philosopher, it is traditionally attributed to the birth of a scientific study of music and its constituent components (melodic and rhythmic sounds), for the first time investigated systematically and with the methodological criteria explicitly declared.

The scientific study of music

If, in the Greek world, a theoretical reflection on the music is testified already between V and IV century B.C., the author with which it is traditionally coincide with the birth of a study “scientific” of musical grammar is Aristosseno, native of Taranto, whose activity is mainly in Athens in the second half of the IV century B.C. Aristosseno is philosopher of Pythagorean formation which soon becomes one of the students more prominent Aristotle to Peripato, much to hope to succeed him in the direction of the school (will instead preferred – with its great disappointment – Theophrastus). This training is essential to understand his approach “dynamic” to the study of music, perceived as an element of nature in perpetual motion/change and therefore as a potential subject for analysis by a theoretical science (theoretike episteme) that, as a “physical” Aristotelian (the discipline that, according to Aristotle, studying the elements in the process of becoming the real), observed, or better to say, perceived with the ear the musical phenomena (rhythms and melodies) products in reality fenomenica and ne astragga, induction, the constituent structures intrinsic (such as rhythmic patterns and intervallari). Once abstract principles (archai) that are at the basis of the constitution of these structures, is then for Aristosseno can go to demonstrate (apodeiknymi) in a timely manner the laws that govern the wonderful “order” (thaumaste taxis) of music. As in the aristotelian conception, observation and demonstration are complementary phases of a process integrated scientific, whose application to the musical field applies to philosopher tarantino the fame of musical theorist more famous of antiquity.

The harmonic science and space sound