Ancient Greek Music

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...was, according to the most reliable sources, WAY into rhythm. This isn't a question, just a place for Geir to come every time he needs reminding that his take on the history of music & what qualifies something as "musical" is total horseshit.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 21 April 2003 21:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Esp. the music that accompanied the Greek comedies, which were tremendously popular public productions: there are reams of literature about this stuff, and most modern inquiry into the subject suggests that dance is UTTERLY INSEPERABLE from music, according to the Greeks.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 21 April 2003 21:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Wherefore, nyah nyah nyah.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 21 April 2003 21:47 (twenty-two years ago)

booyah!

― James Blount (James Blount), Monday, 21 April 2003 21:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Zing!

― buttch (Oops), Monday, 21 April 2003 21:51 (twenty-two years ago)

(if necessary this is the thread where Geir's white aesthetic resistance can point out posts - links please - where he did know what he was talking about, or didn't dodge a question)

― James Blount (James Blount), Monday, 21 April 2003 21:51 (twenty-two years ago)

also, if we're going to insist that "what the Greeks meant by music must somehow relate to what we mean by music," let's also remember that of primary importance to Greek musicians was the notion that they were only transmitting signals from the Muses, which notion, properly examined, renders the term "musical genius" meaningless if applied to humans

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 21 April 2003 22:10 (twenty-two years ago)

eleni karaindrou and other trojan women to thread!

― j.a.e., Monday, 21 April 2003 22:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Also, the Bacchae!

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 21 April 2003 22:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Does anyone know when Euripides's volume of Back to Mine is coming out?

― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 21 April 2003 22:15 (twenty-two years ago)

sorry, Euripides'

― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 21 April 2003 22:16 (twenty-two years ago)

...was, according to the most reliable sources, WAY into rhythm.

All melody (as opposed to harmony) needs rhythm anyway. Melody is based upon rhythm. But it is more than just rhythm.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Monday, 21 April 2003 22:20 (twenty-two years ago)

per Strunk & White "Euripides's" is correct

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 21 April 2003 22:20 (twenty-two years ago)

No backpedaling Geir! Greek music, your cherished font of reference, is 1)monodic and 2) rhythmocentric! except for the pastoral musics, which don't figure into things much anyhow & are a whole separate subject

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 21 April 2003 22:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Geir can't you develop a software program that could make these posts for you? Then you'd be freer to enjoy the nordic weather.

John: that's a big copyediting controversy actually, I think it could magnify into Calum-like proportions.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 21 April 2003 22:22 (twenty-two years ago)

I myself agonize over that apostrophe.

― slutsky (slutsky), Monday, 21 April 2003 22:32 (twenty-two years ago)

There's some fascinating stuff about how rhythm (including that of the African diaspora) is linked mathematically from the overtone series the same way Western harmony is in this interview with Steve Smith here, near the bottom.

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 22 April 2003 01:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Per yr original q, J0hn: Bob Xgau is working on this question right now: Greeks, rhythms, melody. True, FWIW. Part of a book, I think.

― Sasha Frere-Jones (Sasha Frere-Jones), Tuesday, 22 April 2003 01:35 (twenty-two years ago)

It's such a key question in how we conceive of the ancient world! if you ever get a chance to see Plautus or Aristophanes (apples/oranges I know, but for brevity's sake I'll lump them together) by a troupe using drums & torches, you won't believe how clear the comedy becomes. Just amazing.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 22 April 2003 01:57 (twenty-two years ago)

i've heard about the wild time signatures in Greek music before...how much has actually been preserved? are there recordings out there that try to approximate what it sounded like? can we actually talk about this stuff, instead of using it as a forum for bullying an easy target?

― Al (sitcom), Tuesday, 22 April 2003 02:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Play nice, Al...I was just venting my frustration about Geir using a touchstone that very few people (conveniently so for Geir) know much about.

The thing about ancient Greek music is that they didn't have a system of notation, so reconstructing the stuff is a hefty (albeit really fun – or so it seems, reading about it) endeavor. You have to proceed from various texts — plays, poems, historical accounts of places where music was played (like you might find in Thucydides) — and then look to archaeology for the instruments that have survived, and then make a few educated guesses about how an expert on said instruments might have played them (as opposed to oneself, who can't have had the expert training that a contemporaneous user of the instrument would have been able to seek out)...and then you just do your best. There's an album on Harmonia Mundi that came out in '79 called Musique de la Grece Antique that tried just such a reconstruction.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 22 April 2003 02:12 (twenty-two years ago)

henry cowell tried studyiing this stuff IIRC.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 22 April 2003 02:31 (twenty-two years ago)

wow, this could actually turn into a great, Geir-proof thread. Bravo J0hn!

― James Blount (James Blount), Tuesday, 22 April 2003 02:32 (twenty-two years ago)

There's an album on Harmonia Mundi that came out in '79 called Musique de la Grece Antique that tried just such a reconstruction.

Thanks for the info, I've been wanting to hear proper Ancient Greek or Roman music for years. One thing that's always puzzled me is why in Hollywood films about Ancient Rome always use brass fanfares - what makes that Roman in any way?

I imagine Geir can sidestep the issue: after all the Greeks were down in Southern Europe, contaminated by non-Aryan influences and far far from the clear pure air of Scandinavia.

― Dadaismus, Tuesday, 22 April 2003 13:42 (twenty-two years ago)

J0hn: The thing about ancient Greek music is that they didn't have a system of notation

This is positively wrong, as far as I know. See e.g. http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/11/lester.htm, or http://www.nexusbooks.org/Gkmusitxt.htm (which sadly lacks graphics).

Fragments of Ancient Greek music can be heard here, in Real format (which I haven't tried) and MIDI (which sounds a bit weird).

― OleM (OleM), Tuesday, 22 April 2003 16:55 (twenty-two years ago)

Ah, found some mp3s as well -- most popular is the skolion (drinking song) from the epitaph of one Seikilos:

http://www2.vo.lu/homepages/fce/SAMPLER2000.HTM
http://yves.ursch.free.fr/disques/disques1.htm (from the Harmonia Mundi record referred to; search page for "Seikilos")
http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/chor/ (also includes other pieces)

― OleM (OleM), Tuesday, 22 April 2003 17:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Ole I bow before your superior kung fu! i comfort myself with this extract from that Atlantic article:

most significant are elaborate treatises that explain the system of musical notation and the various intervals, scales, and modes on which it was based.

The problem is that few people aside from classical scholars have known that this material exists,

I'm not a scholar, but I did take a degree in Classical Studies without learning about this system of notation. It remains fair to say that Geir's references to the Greek origins of music are specious, esp. since his argument seems to rest on the notion that since the word "music" is derived from the Greek, Greek music = music.

― J0hn "hand me down my bazouki" Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 22 April 2003 18:48 (twenty-two years ago)

john- are you losing yr mind over geir or something?

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 22 April 2003 18:53 (twenty-two years ago)

YES

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 22 April 2003 20:07 (twenty-two years ago)

will xgau's book posit that krautrock really is greekrock? (gyrorock?)

is geir afraid to boogie?
m.

― msp, Tuesday, 22 April 2003 20:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Why does it matter what the Greeks thought about music?

― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 22 April 2003 20:28 (twenty-two years ago)

didn't Harry Partch draw on what he liked from Greek music ?

(well if so, because i've heard more Partch than Greek, and FWIW, there's certainly very visceral truth and humour in his music, which often seems heavily rhythmically organised various harmonic stuff)

(i admit i _know_ _nothing_ about Greek music, so maybe i _should_ _not_ _post_ this)

― george gosset (gegoss), Tuesday, 22 April 2003 21:44 (twenty-two years ago)

DV, please read thread before replying.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Wednesday, 23 April 2003 14:29 (twenty-two years ago)

I've done a fair bit of research into greek music and
suffice it to say that it's impossible to know exactly
what they listened to back then. modern musicologists just
have to fill in a lot of gaps and sometimes just guess.

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Wednesday, 23 April 2003 20:31 (twenty-two years ago)

"what they listened to"
I mean it's impossible to recreate it exactly as it used to
be. We no longer have some of the instruments they did, etc.

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Wednesday, 23 April 2003 20:33 (twenty-two years ago)

oh and greek music did have notation. unless my teacher didnt just made those things up

― Chupa-Cabras (vicc13), Wednesday, 23 April 2003 20:58 (twenty-two years ago)

one month passes...

Musique de la Grece Antique is back in print again (check that byline btw).

― James Blount (James Blount), Saturday, 14 June 2003 06:59 (twenty-two years ago)

nineteen years pass...

search and destroy - -GREEKRAP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCFvUa_PMYg

― | (Latham Green), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 18:33 (two years ago)

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