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Music, Musik, musique, musica, muzsika, muzyka, musiikki, müzik, miwsig: the world owes the word to the Greeks. Melody, harmony, symphony, polyphony: these too. Orchestra, organ, chorus, chord, tone, baritone, tonic, diatonic, diapason, chromatic, rhythm, syncopation: all from Greek. Ancient Greek culture was permeated with music. Probably no other people in history has made more frequent reference to music and musical activity in its literature and art. |
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Yet the subject is practically ignored by nearly all who study that culture or teach about it. Sometimes its very existence seems to be barely acknowledged. In a justly celebrated book on the Lesbian poets we read that it is a natural assumption that all or almost all Sappho's poems 'were recited by herself informally to her companions'.1 The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece, where burning Sappho loved and recited? In that generally admirable volume The Oxford History of the Classical World (1986) we look in vain for a section on Greek music. The subject is indeed touched on in connection with lyric poetry, but in the briefest terms. Many similar cases could be cited. |
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The most pervasive sign of the average classicist's unconcern with the realities of music is the ubiquitous rendering of aulos, a reed-blown instrument, by 'flute'. There was a time when it was legitimate, because the classification of instruments had not been thought out scientifically and it was quite customary to speak of a 'flute family' that included the reed-blown instruments.2 But that tolerant era is long past, and now the only excuse for calling an aulos a flute is that given by Dr Johnson when asked why he defined 'pastern' as the knee of a horse: 'Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance.' Yet countless literary scholars and even archaeologists persist in this deplorable habit, deaf to all protests from the enlightened. One might as well call the syrinx a mouth organ. Those who rely on the standard |
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1 D. L. Page, Sappho and Alcaeus (Oxford, 1955). 119 His emphasis is on 'informally', as opposed to a formal or ceremonial setting. |
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2 See Becker, 36-8. |
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