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ANTIQUITY
Pre-Dated History
Ancient Greece
Ancient Rome
Antiquity:
 The word comes from old Latin
 Antiquitus, which means Ancient Times
 Historically Antiquity deals with the time
period before the end of the Roman
Empire
 OR
 Before the Middle Ages
Time Denotations
 ca.= circa/around
 BCE= Before Common Era
 CE= Common Era
Relics:
 50,000 BCE: Oldest possible remains of
instrument; recorder
 34,000 BCE: Oldest certain remains of
instrument; flute
Civilization:
 4,000-3,000 BCE: Egypt and Sumerian
civilizations emerge
 People depicted in surviving records
(drawings on walls, tablets, etc.) as singing
and playing instruments
Biblical Times
 Several musical references are made
from biblical times—consider this a
historical perspective.
Biblical Times
 Reference examples: (know what, not where)
 Tambourine (Exodus 15: 20-21)
 Harp (1 Samuel 16:14-23)
 Music Therapy (same as above)
(p.2 in text)
 Cymbals (2 Chronicles 5: 12-14)
 Lyres (same as above)
 Trumpet (same as above)
 Singers (same as above)
Ancient Greece
 Socrates: “The unexplained life is not
worth living.”
 Mythical explanations provoked thought
 Development of mathematical/physic
principles
 Empiricism: Reality based on experience
 First to form city-state (democratic)
government—polis
Ancient Greece
 By the 5th Century BCE:
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Parthenon built
Philosophy of Socrates by Plato
Plays of Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophenes
Alexander the Great
The Beginning of the End
Ancient GreeceMusic and Society
 Important role in life
 Specific repertoires developed for
different activities
 Most music was improvised or
memorized (explains why it didn’t survive)
 Greek thought fused word, music and
dance as inseparable (Plato-song melos)
Melos-Greek; means melody
Ancient GreeceMusic Theory
 Most surviving musical contributions deal
with theory
 Monophonic
 Tetrachord Construction
 Antiphonal, Responsorial, Solo
Tetrachords
 FYI
 Descending Perfect 4th
 Spanning 2 octaves +1 Note
 Inner notes determined by characteristic
genera
 Diatonic: whole step, whole step, half step
 Chromatic: minor 3rd, half step, half step
 Enharmonic: Major 3rd, quarter tone, quarter tone
 Four interlocking tetrachords form Greater
Perfect System
Tetrachords
 FYI
 Examples of Characteristic systems or notes
(tonois pl, tonos s.):
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Dorian
Southern Greece
Ionian
Southwestern Greece
Phrygian
Asia Minor
Lydian Asia Minor
Aeolian Greek Islands
 (Dorian, ionian, etc. refer to regional practices much like we
would characterize different customs of our New England
region, West Coast, South, etc.).
Epitaph of Seikilos
 Epitaph is from tombstone in Ancient Greek
notation
 ca. 100 CE
 Based on ionian tonos, using diatonic genos
 EDCBAGF#EDC#BAG#F#ED#
Only partial composition survived. Actual performance is an
approximation from what is known.
♫
The Roman Empire
 Greece fell to Rome (2nd-1st Century BCE)
 No substantial Roman musical notation has survived
 Rome absorbed Greek musical tradition (time, place,
specific repertoire, importance)
 3rd Century CE, Roman Empire began to fall
 Christianity eventually replaced the Greek and Roman
pantheon (virtually paganism—what we think of as
mythology) to become the official state religion
(Catholicism)—about the whole (Kath + holos greek)
 THUS THE FORMATION OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC
CHURCH
Musical Legacies of
Antiquity
 5th Century CE, Greek and Roman
musical tradition vanished (emergence of
Chant)-monophonic line remains
 Theory practices were written and
passed on from Ptolemy (2nd Century)Boethius (c.480-524) in to the Middle
Ages
Musical Legacies of
Antiquity
 Music remained an important part of life
and education
 MANY pro-art (music) arguments today
come from the foundation set during
Antiquity
Pythagoras
(Music and the Cosmos)
 Mathematician and Astrologist
 6th Century BCE
 Given credit for:
 The Discovery of the Relationship between sound
and number
 Pythagorean Theorem (a2 + b2 = c2)
 Basic Principles of Geometry
 Interval nomenclature (names) came from
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
(Music and the Cosmos)
 Believed that the same mathematical
laws that governed music also governed
the solar system.
 Harmony of the spheres
 “There is a geometry in the humming of
the strings; there is music in the spacing
of the spheres.”
Pythagoras
 Mathematical proportions found to show
certain musical relationships
 2:1 Octave
 3:2 Fifth
 4:3 Fourth
 Mathematical simplicity caused these to
be called “Perfect” consonances.
Music and the Soul
 Music said to govern the soul
 Myth of Orpheus and Euridice
 Doctrine of Ethos
 Music capable of arousing listeners to
certain kinds of emotions and behaviors
 Remember Plato definition of song (S.10)
Music and the state
 FYI
 Aristotle:
 “Music has the power of producing a certain
effect on the moral character of the soul, and
if it has the power to do this, it is clear that
the young must be directed to music and
must be educated in it.”
Vocal vs. Instrumental
 Poetry and song indistinguishable, both sung
 Music consisted of all parts (Plato definition)—
music with no words was “lesser.”
 Voices only found in animals with a soul
(Aristotle)
 Instrumental music created “anxiety” over the
ability to move people w/o using words
Theory vs. Practice
 Mostly interested in mathematical
relationships to the world rather than how
to be better musicians
 This accounts for the minimal amounts of
music that survived
 Liberal arts divided into a musical
dichotomy
Liberal taken from liber—liberty; or individuals who were free
Theory vs. Practice
Musical Dichotomy
 Mathematical
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Called Quadrivium
Consisted of:
Arithmetic
Geometry
Astronomy
Music
 FYI
 Language Arts
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Called Trivium
Consisted of:
Grammar
Rhetoric
Dialect
Socrates Lineage
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Socrates
Plato
Aristotle
Aristoxenus
 FYI