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11
Historical Synthesis 1. Sunrise and Forenoon |
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In the preceding chapters we have studied the various elements that go to make up ancient Greek music as a performing art, as an object of theoretical inquiry, and as a cultural phenomenon. It remains to attempt a synthesis in which we bring the chronological aspect to the fore and outline the historical development of Greek music from century to century. |
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The Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age |
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We begin with the Mycenaeans. The Cycladic civilization of the third millennium, with its figurines of men playing harps, paired pipes, and panpipes, is earlier in date, but although it falls geographically within the limits of what were later Greek lands, it is a non-Hellenic culture with Anatolian affinities. The Minoan civilization centred on Crete is also non-Hellenic, though important as a major source of cultural influence on the Mycenaean Greeks. It was from the Minoans that the Mycenaeans acquired the lyre, an instrument that had been slowly evolving in the Near East for over a millennium. The lyre is the only musical instrument so far attested for the Mycenaeans, and it appears to have enjoyed the highest prestige. It was played in the palaces, to judge from the representation of a lyre-player in a fresco from Pylos, and fragments of two ivory-faced lyres were found in the royal 'beehive' tomb at Menidi in Attica. It is, of course, a reasonable assumption that some other instruments were also in use. The Minoans, at any rate, knew the 'Phrygian' double pipes, cymbals, conchs, sistra, and perhaps harps. The Mycenaeans, besides whatever they took over from the Minoans, are likely to have had their own native instruments, probably simple traditional things such as panpipe and horn. |
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They must have had their own musical tradition too. It is possible |
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