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scheme, which now became specialized in function as the notation used for instrumental music. The two notations circulated in conjunction, and extensions to cover a wider compass were applied to both together. Some refinements of the rhythmic and articulatory notation seem on present evidence to have been devised later than 100 BC: the hyphen and double point, the kompismos and melismos signs, and possibly the leimma. There was also a change, after 100 BC, in the convention regarding successive syllables sung to the same note; again it was a change in the direction of greater explicitness. But in all their basic essentials the notations were well established by the mid-third century BC at the latest. They were in use by that date in Egypt and, by implication, over most of the Greek world. |
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It is doubtful, however, whether they were understood by many non-professionals. They were by no means necessary for the propagation of music. From time immemorial people learned songs simply by hearing them. Poet-composers taught choruses by singing to them. By the fifth century it may be that copies of the words were provided to assist the learning process, but as for the melodies, much the easiest way to pick them up was aurally, and few would have been helped by note-symbols. Plutarch relates an anecdote about Euripides singing an ode in front of his chorus to teach it to them, and reproving one of them for laughing at his enharmonic Mixolydian.43 |
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Having learned it, they would very likely remember it all their lives, and if a tragedy was revived within a generation or so, there would be people availablenot only the original choreutswho could recall the music. So it was perfectly possible for the music of popular plays to be preserved orally for half a century or more before being committed to writing. The fragments of music to Euripidean plays that have-survived are from two of his popular melodramas, Orestes and Iphigeneia at Aulis.44 There is no reason to doubt that it is the original music, but it is not necessary to assume that it was transmitted in writing from before 400 BC. It is important to remember that lyric and dramatic texts were normally copied without music. The fragments with notes are exceptional, and re- |
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43 Plut. De audiendo 46 b. Cf. C. J. Herington, Poetry into Drama (Berkeley and LA, 1985), 43-5. |
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44Oresres was his most popular play. We know that there was a performance of it in 340 BC, and of one of his Iphigeneias (we do not know which) in the previous year. |
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