Critical and Historical Essays: Lectures delivered at Columbia UniversityMacDowell, Edward
History
Critical and Historical Essays: Lectures delivered at Columbia University
MacDowell, Edward
Music -- History and criticism
Thus Pythagoras brought order into the music as well as
into the lives of people. But whereas it ennobled the
people, it killed the music, the one vent in life through
which unbounded utterance is possible; its essence is so
interwoven with spirituality that to tear it away and fetter
it with human mathematics is to lower it to the level of mere
utilitarianism. And so it was with Greek music, which was held
subordinate to metre, to poetry, to acting, and finally became
a term of contempt. Pythagoras wished to banish the flute,
as Plato also did later, and the name of flute player was used
as a reproach. I fancy this was because the flute, on account
of its construction, could ignore the mathematical divisions
prescribed for the stringed instruments, and therefore could
indulge in purely emotional music. Besides, the flute was
the chosen instrument of the orgiastic Bacchic cult, and its
associations were those of unbridled license. To be sure, the
voice was held by no mathematical restrictions as to pitch;
but its music was held in check by the words, and its metre
by dancing feet.
Having measured the musical intervals, there still remained
the task of classifying the different manners of singing which
existed in Greece, and using all their different notes to form
a general system. For just as in different parts of Greece
there existed different dances, the steps of which were known
as Lydian, Ionian, Locrian, and Dorian feet, and so on, so the
melodies to which they were danced were known as being in the
Lydian, Ionian, Locrian, or Dorian scale or mode. In speaking
of Hindu music, I explained that what we call a mode consists
of a scale, and that one mode differs from another _only_ in
the position of the semitones in this scale. Now in ancient
Greece there were in use over fifteen different modes, each one
common to the part of the country in which it originated. At the
time of Pythagoras there were seven in general use: the Dorian,
Lydian, Aeolian or Locrian, Hypo- (or low) Lydian, Phrygian,
Hypo- (or low) Phrygian, and Mixolydian or mixed Lydian. The
invention of the latter is attributed to Sappho by Plutarch,
quoting Aristoxenus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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