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How do we know anything about ancient music? The evidence can be summarized under five heads. |
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First, there is the evidence of archaeology and art. We have some remains of actual instruments, mainly pipes, but only, of course, their less perishable parts. There are also models of instruments, made for votive or other purposes, and figurines, statues, and reliefs representing men, women, or deities playing instruments. Above all, there are large numbers of vase-paintings, particularly from Athens in the sixth and fifth centuries BC and from Greek South Italy in the fourth. They have much to tell us not only about forms of instruments but also about performing techniques and contexts. They can even tell us something about singing. Other forms of pictorial art, such as engraved gems, frescos, and mosaics, contribute additional information for later periods. |
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Secondly there are the innumerable references to music and music-making scattered through Greek literature from the eighth century BC onwards. The lyric and comic poets are especially rich in them. We are fortunate in the fact that many musical references by lost authors of these categories and by out-of-the-way historians and antiquarians were collected and quoted by Athenaeus of Naucratis (AD c. 200) in his Deipnosophistai, a lengthy work in dialogue form in which all aspects of the Classical supper-party and symposium are eruditely discussed and illustrated. Athenaeus' dull-witted contemporary and fellow citizen Pollux is also of importance as a compiler of Classical terminology, catalogued in the manner of Roget's Thesaunas with no discussion and only sporadic citation of sources. Latin authors provide further useful material, in so far as they reflect Greek sources or allude to current Greek or common Graeco-Roman musical practice. |
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As a third category we may distinguish specialist writing on music. This supplies us with much information of a technical nature on which other authors are largely silent. Of especial importance is Aristoxenus of Tarentum, a pupil of Aristotle. A number of his many works were to do with music in one aspect or another. Nearly all of them are lost, regrettably, though valuable fragments are preserved by Athenaeus and others. What has survived in a more continuous state consists of a few pages from his Elements of Rhythm and three books of Harmonics, the first of which represents a different treatise from the rest; |
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