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The ancients have, of course, left us no metronome markings. But we are not completely without means of forming some ideas about absolute tempo. Nearly all of the music with which we are concerned was vocal music in which the short and long notes corresponded to short and long syllables. So there was a natural limit to the speed at which it could go, in the speed at which the words could be articulated; and we have no reason to suspect that there was any form of song in which the words were gabbled as fast as possible. Nor is it likely that they were sung much more slowly than they would be uttered in ordinary speech, because short syllables cannot support undue lengthening in delivery. That is a fundamental feature of the opposition between short syllables and long ones: long syllables can be prolonged ad lib., short ones cannot. When the Greeks wanted texts for very slow singing, they composed them without short syllables (see below). For normal texts, then, we should assume a tempo-range related to that of ordinary speech, though perhaps in general a little more deliberate, as in the musical rhythm (tempo giusto as opposed to parlando-rubato) the long syllables had to be slightly longer in relation to the shorts than in speech. The tempo would also be more uniform (within a given song); there may have been some expressive variation, but it would hardly be as great as the variations of tempo inherent in natural speech.63 |
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Further indications can be drawn from the relation of music to movement. We do not know how to match notes to dance-steps. But when a tragic chorus (of old men, it may be) makes an unhurried entrance marching in anapaestic rhythmchanting, not singing, but the aulos accompaniment was melodicwe can match their syllables to their steps easily enough. One measure,  , must correspond to a double pace; no alternative has any plausibility. That gives us a fair idea of the tempo. Similarly, when a comic chorus arrives in hot pursuit of someone while chanting or singing in trochaic rhythmagain perhaps old men, not able to run as fast as they used to, but still jogging alongwe can equate the trochaic measure  with their double pace.64 When they are not |
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63 Aristid. Quint. p 40. 1 speaks of change of tempo as one type of rhythmic modulation. |
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64 At. Nub. 204ff., cf. Eq. 247ff., Pax 301ff. Trochaic rhythm is also found in tragedy in association with running or hasty entries, but perhaps not such direct (performative) association: Eur. Ion 1250, Or. 729, 1506, 1549, Soph. OC 887. |
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