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Greek musicwas an old Aegean substrate element. As it appears also in the modes called Phrygian and Lydian, it would seem to have been established in western Anatolia too. |
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A related matter is the structural importance of the fourth in Greek music and musical thinking. This again associates Greece with a vast zone stretching from north Africa across southern Asia to the Far East, and disjoins it from the greater part of Europe.17 It is true that our evidence does not suffice for ancient Europe, and the existence of quartal melody in Scotland and Ireland might be interpreted as a marginal survival from an originally much larger quartal zone. But in this case one would have to leave open the possibility that quartal music belonged to a pre-Indo-European stratum, and that the general domination of the third in Europe reflects the music of the western Indo-Europeans. |
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We have seen that in later Antiquity Greek music became fully diatonic and also less tetrachordal, more addicted to the third as the mid-step of the fifth. These developments brought it more into line with what we see as the European norm. The change from the rectangular 'Aegean' panpipe to the stepped European type, though a detail of minor significance in itself, might be a straw in the same wind. To what extent the growing impingement of the Roman world on the Greek may have been a factor in these changes is a matter for speculation. It seems unnecessary to invoke it to account for the triumph of diatonicism, at any rate; the old enharmonic was already in retreat in Aristoxenus' time, and there is a universal tendency for the empty thirds of pentatonic scales to be filled in. |
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Another development of the Roman period was the increasing use of ornament in melody, something often regarded as typically oriental. But again there is no reason to ascribe it to anything other than internal evolution in Greek musical sensibilities. The elaborate ornamentation that we associate with eastern music was probably a later growth in the Arabic-Persian sphere, where Byzantine influence may have had a part to play. |
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In Greek music, as in other aspects of early Greek culture, we are faced with the complex product of Indo-European inheritance, Aegean and oriental environment, and Hellenic art and craft. It is our duty and delight to investigate all three of these elements; but the last, to which we have given most attention, was undoubtedly the most potent. |
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17 Seep. 163. |
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