The art of music. Vol. 01 (of 14) : $b The pre-Classic periods
History
The art of music. Vol. 01 (of 14) : $b The pre-Classic periods
Music -- History and criticism; Musicians
All legendary references to the prehistoric era of Greek music point
to its importation into Hellas by various artists, partly from the
North (Thessaly and Thrace) and partly from the East (Asia Minor). In
this we see probably nothing more than a racial recollection of the
Dorian migration, which, as we know, took place about the year 1104
B. C. Orpheus, of whom we have already spoken, must be counted among
the Northerners, the Thracians, for his native place was Pieria at the
foot of Mt. Olympus. His pupil, Musaios, was supposed to have lived in
Athens, and his son Eumolpos was the progenitor of the famous family
of priests and singers which were entrusted perpetually with the rites
of the Eleusinian mysteries, sacred to Demeter. Amphion, another of
the Northern artists (the miraculous builder of the walls of Thebes),
is described by Pausanias (Græco-Roman historian, 2d Cent., A. D.) as
a relative of Tantalos of Lydia, and to have brought from there the
Lydian mode. He is also credited with having increased the lyre from
four to seven strings. Heraclides Ponticus calls him the founder of
the _kitharœdic_ school of poetry, which was governed by a method and
laws distinct from the _auletic_ school, associated with the aulos,
the Grecian flute, from which it took its name. The regulation of the
cult of Apollo at Delphi is ascribed to Philammon, whose son Thamyris,
a native of the more uncultured regions of Thrace, was said to have
challenged the muses to contest, and to have been punished for this
offense with blindness.
Thus the North was, as we have seen, the home of the kitharœdic muse;
Phrygia, on the other hand, must be considered as the cradle of the
auletic school, of which the most prominent early names are Hyagnis,
Marsyas, and Olympus, the three oldest players upon the flute. The
first of these was said to be the inventor of that art. Marsyas was
his son and first disciple, while Olympus introduced the art into
Greece and became the first Hellenic master of artistic instrumental
music.[38]
The first distinct period of musical composition is that of the _nomoi_
(_sing._ _nomos_; Gr. [Greek: nomos] = law), a certain type of melodies
constructed according to fixed rules, which were sung as solos to
verses whose subject was usually the praise of some god. (The singers
performing them were known as _aœds_ and later as rhapsodists.) The
earliest _nomoi_ were melodies of very simple structure, but from the
first there is a distinction between the kitharœdic and auletic types,
the first of which is supposed to have followed the Homeric hexameter
(iambic metre), and the latter to have been based on the elegiac
measures, offering, however, a considerable variety of rhythm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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