The Modes of Ancient Greek Music Part 9

_g_ 5/4 _b_ 6/5 _d_ 7/6 _f_ 8/7 _g_

which give the natural chord of the Seventh. This however is no more than a hypothesis.

It evidently follows from all this that Ptolemy's octaves do not const.i.tute a system of _modes_. They are merely the groups of notes, of the compa.s.s of an octave, which are most likely to be used in the several keys, and which Ptolemy or some earlier theorist chose to call by the names of those keys.

[Footnote 1: _Harm._ i. 16 [Greek: plen kathoson adousi men akolouthos to dedeigmeno syntono diatoniko, kathaper exestai skopein apo tes ton oikeion autou logon paraboles, harmozontai de heteron ti genos] (sc. the Pythagorean), [Greek: xynengizon men ekeino, k.t.l.]]

-- 32. _Remains of Greek Music._

The extant specimens of Greek music are mostly of the second century A.D., and therefore nearly contemporary with Ptolemy. The most considerable are the melodies of three lyrical pieces or hymns, viz.

(1) a hymn to Calliope, (2) a hymn to Apollo (or Helios),--both ascribed to a certain Dionysius,--and (3) a hymn to Nemesis, ascribed to Mesomedes[2]. Besides these there are (4) some short instrumental pa.s.sages or exercises given by Bellermann's _Anonymus_ (pp. 94-96).

And quite recently the list has been increased by (5) an inscription discovered by Mr. W. M. Ramsay, which gives a musical setting of four short gnomic sentences, and (6) a papyrus fragment (now in the collection of the Arch-duke Rainer) of the music of a chorus in the _Orestes_ of Euripides. These two last additions to our scanty stock of Greek music are set out and discussed by Dr. Wessely of Vienna and M. Ruelle in the _Revue des etudes Grecques_ (V. 1892, pp. 265-280), also by Dr. Otto Crusius in the _Philologus_, Vol. LII, pp.

160-200[1].

[Footnote 2: It seems needless to set out these melodies here. The first satisfactory edition of them is that of Bellermann, _Die Hymnen des Dionysius und Mesomedes_ (Berlin, 1840). They are given by Westphal in his _Musik des griechischen Alterthumes_ (1883), and by Gevaert, _Musique de l'Antiquite_, vol. i. pp. 445 ff.; also in Mr.

W. Chappell's _History of Music_ (London, 1874), where the melodies of the first and third hymns will be found harmonised by the late Sir George Macfarren.

The melody published by Kircher (_Musurgia_, i. p. 541) as a fragment of the first Pythian ode of Pindar has no attestation, and is generally regarded as a forgery.]

The music of the three hymns is noted in the Lydian key (answering to the modern scale with one [symbol: flat]). The melody of the second hymn is of the compa.s.s of an octave, the notes being those of the Perfect System from Parhypate Hypaton to Trite Diezeugmenon (_f - f_ with one [symbol: flat]). The first employs the same octave with a lower note added, viz. Hypate Hypaton (_e_): the third adds the next higher note, Paranete Diezeugmenon (_g_). Thus the Lydian key may be said, in the case of the second hymn, and less exactly in the case of the two others, to give the Lydian or _c_-species of the octave in the most convenient part of the scale; just as on Ptolemy's system of Modes we should expect it to do.

This octave, however, represents merely the _compa.s.s_ (_ambitus_ or _tessitura_) of the melody: it has nothing to do with its _tonality_.

In the first two hymns, as Bellermann pointed out, the key-note is the Hypate Meson; and the mode--in the modern sense of that word--is that of the octave _e - e_ (the Dorian mode of Helmholtz's theory).

In the third hymn the key-note appears to be the Lichanos Meson, so that the mode is that of _g-g_, viz. the Hypo-phrygian.

[Footnote 1: Of the discovery made at Delphi, after most of this book was in type, I hope to say something in the _Appendix_.]

Of the instrumental pa.s.sages given by the _Anonymus_ three are clearly in the Hypo-dorian or common mode, the Mese (_a_) being the key-note. (See Gevaert, i. p. 141.) A fourth (-- 104) also ends on the Mese, but the key-note appears to be the Parhypate Meson (_f_).

Accordingly Westphal and Gevaert a.s.sign it to the Hypo-lydian species (_f - f_). In Westphal's view the circ.u.mstance of the end of the melody falling, not on the key-note, but on the Third or Mediant of the octave, was characteristic of the Modes distinguished by the prefix _syntono-_, and accordingly the pa.s.sage in question is p.r.o.nounced by him to be Syntono-lydian. All those pa.s.sages, however, are mere fragments of two or three bars each, and are quoted as examples of certain peculiarities of rhythm. They can hardly be made to lend much support to any theory of the Modes.

The music of Mr. Ramsay's inscription labours under the same defect of excessive shortness. If, however, we regard the four brief sentences as set to a continuous melody, we obtain a pa.s.sage consisting of thirty-six notes in all, with a compa.s.s of less than an octave, and ending on the lowest note of that compa.s.s. Unlike the other extant specimens of Greek music it is written in the Ionian key--a curious fact which has not been noticed by Dr. Wessely.

INSCRIPTION WITH MUSICAL NOTES.

[Music:

[Greek: hos-on zes phai-nou.

me-den hol-os sy ly-pou.

pros o-li-gon es-ti to zen.

to te-los ho chro-nos a-pai-tei.]

The notes which enter into this melody form the scale _f[Symbols: sharp]-g-a-b-c[Symbols: sharp]-d-e[-f[Symbols: sharp]]_, which is an octave of the Dorian species (_e - e_ on the white notes). Hence if _f_[Symbols: sharp], on which the melody ends, is the key-note, the _mode_ is the Dorian. On the other hand the predominant notes are those of the triad _a-c[Symbols: sharp]-e_, which point to the key of _a_ major, with the difference that the Seventh is flat (_g_ instead of _g_[Symbols: sharp]). On this view the music would be in the Hypo-phrygian mode.

However this may be, the most singular feature of this fragment remains to be mentioned, viz. the agreement between the musical notes and the _accentuation_ of the words. We know from the grammarians that an acute accent signified that the vowel was sounded with a rise in the pitch of the voice, and that a circ.u.mflex denoted a rise followed on the same syllable by a lower note--every such rise and fall being quite independent both of syllabic quant.i.ty and of stress or _ictus_. Thus in ordinary speech the accents formed a species of melody,--[Greek: loG.o.des ti melos], as it is called by Aristoxenus[1]. When words were _sung_ this 'spoken melody' was no longer heard, being superseded by the melody proper. Dionysius of Halicarna.s.sus is at pains to explain (_De Comp. Verb._, c. 11), that the melody to which words are set does not usually follow or resemble the quasi-melody of the accents, _e.g._ in the following words of a chorus in the _Orestes_ of Euripides (ll. 140-142):--

[Greek: siga siga leukon ichnos arbyles t.i.thete, me ktypeite; apoprobat' ekeis' apopro moi koitas,]

[Footnote 1: _Harm._ p. 18 Meib. [Greek: legetai gar de kai loG.o.des ti melos, to synkeimenon ek ton prosodion, to en tois onomasi; physikon gar to epiteinein kai anienai en to dialegesthai].]

he notices that the melody differs in several points from the spoken accents: (1) the three first words are all on the same note, in spite of the accents; (2) the last syllable of [Greek: arbyles] is as high as the second, though that is the only accented syllable: (3) the first syllable of [Greek: t.i.thete] is lower than the two others, instead of being higher: (4) the circ.u.mflex of [Greek: ktypeite] is lost ([Greek: ephanistai]), because the word is all on the same pitch; (5) the fourth syllable of [Greek: apoprobate] is higher in pitch, instead of the third. In Mr. Ramsay's inscription, however, the music follows the accents as closely as possible. Every acute accent coincides with a rise of pitch, except in [Greek: hoson], which begins the melody, and in [Greek: esti], for which we should perhaps read the orthotone [Greek: esti]. Of the four instances of the circ.u.mflex accent three exhibit the two notes and the falling pitch which we expect. The interval is either a major or a minor Third. In the other case ([Greek: zes) the next note is a Third lower: but it does not seem to belong to the circ.u.mflexed syllable.

All this cannot be accidental. It leads us to the conclusion that the musical notes represent a kind of recitative, or imitation of spoken words, rather than a melody in the proper sense of the term.

If any considerable specimen of the music of Euripides had survived, it might have solved many of the problems with which we have been dealing. The fragment before us extends over about six lines in dochmiac metre (_Orestes_ 338-343), with the vocal notation: but no single line is entire. The key is the Lydian. The genus is either Enharmonic or Chromatic. a.s.suming that it is Enharmonic--the alternative adopted by Dr. Wessely--the characters which are still legible may be represented in modern notation as follows:

[Music: [_Euripides_, _Orestes 338-344_.

[Greek: (katolo)phy-ro-mai; ma-te-ros (haima sas ho d' ana)bak-cheu-ei; ho me-gas (olbos ou monimo)s en bro-tois; a-na (de laiphos hos ti)s a-ka-tou tho-as ti-na(xas daimon) kat-e-kly-sen (deinon ponon) hos pon-tou labrois k.t.l.

It should be observed that in the fragment the line [Greek: katolophyromai katolophyromai] comes before 338 ([Greek: materos k.t.l.]), not after it, as in our texts[1].

[Footnote 1: I need not repeat what is said by Dr. Wessely and M.

Ruelle in defence of the genuineness of our fragment. They justly point to the remarkable coincidence that the music of this very play is quoted by Dionysius of Halicarna.s.sus (_l. c._). It would almost seem as if it was the only well-known specimen of music of the cla.s.sical period of tragedy.

The transcription of Dr. Crusius, with his conjectural restorations, will be found in the _Appendix_. I have only introduced one of his corrections here, viz. the note on the second syllable of [Greek: kateklysen].]

The notes employed, according to the interpretation given above, give the scale _g-a-a*-a#-d-e-e*_. If the genus is Chromatic, as M. Ruelle is disposed to think, they are _g-a-a#-b-d-e-f_. When these scales are compared with the Perfect System we find that they do not entirely agree with it. Whether the genus is Enharmonic or Chromatic the notes from _a_ to _e*_ (or _f_) answer to those of the Perfect System (of the same genus) from Hypate Meson to Trite Diezeugmenon.

But in either case the lowest note (_g_) finds no place in the System, since it can only be the Diatonic Lichanos Hypaton. It is possible, however, that the scale belongs to the period when the original octave had been extended by the addition of a tone below the Hypate--the note, in fact, which we have already met with under the name of Hyper-hypate (p. 39). Thus the complete scale may have consisted of the disjunct tetrachords _a-d_ and _e-a_, with the tone _g-a_. It may be observed here that although the scale in question does not fit into the Perfect System, it conforms to the general rules laid down by Aristoxenus for the melodious succession of intervals. It is unnecessary therefore to suppose (as Dr. Wessely and M. Ruelle do) that the scale exhibits a _mixture_ of different genera.

It must be vain to attempt to discover the tonality of a short fragment which has neither beginning nor end. The only group of notes which has the character of a cadence is that on the word [Greek:(olo)phypomai], and again on the words [Greek: en brotois], viz. the notes _a# a* a_ (if the genus is the Enharmonic). The same notes occur in reversed order on [Greek: akatou] and [Greek: (kat)eklusen]. This seems to bear out the common view of the Enharmonic as produced by the introduction of an 'accidental' or pa.s.sing note. It will be seen, in fact, that the Enharmonic notes (_a*_ and _e*_) only occur before or after the 'standing' notes (_a_ and _e_).

Relying on the fact that the lowest note is _g_, Dr. Wessely and M.

Ruelle p.r.o.nounce the mode to be the Phrygian (_g-g_ in the key with one [Symbols: flat], or _d-d_ in the natural key). I have already put forward a different explanation of this _g_, and will only add here that it occurs twice in the fragment, both times on a short syllable[1]. The important notes, so far as the evidence goes, are _a_, which twice comes at the end of a verse (with a pause in the sense), and _e_, which once has that position. If _a_ is the key-note, the mode--in the modern sense--is Dorian (the _e_-species).

If _e_ is the key-note, it is Mixo-lydian (the _b_-species).

[Footnote 1: Dr. Crusius, however, detects a [Symbols: phi]; (the sign for _g_) over the first syllable of [Greek: kateklusen] and the second syllable of [Greek: pontou]. There is little trace of them in his facsimile.]

-- 33. _Modes of Aristides Quintilia.n.u.s._

The most direct testimony in support of the view that the ancient Modes were differentiated by the succession of their intervals has still to be considered. It is the account given by Aristides Quintilia.n.u.s (p. 21 Meib.) of the six Modes ([Greek: harmoniai]) of Plato's _Republic_. After describing the genera and their varieties the 'colours,' he goes on to say that there were other divisions of the tetrachord ([Greek: tetrachordikai diaireseis]) which the most ancient musicians used for the [Greek: harmoniai], and that these were sometimes greater in compa.s.s than the octave, sometimes less. He then gives the intervals of the scale for each of the six Modes mentioned by Plato, and adds the scales in the ancient notation. They are of the Enharmonic genus, and may be represented by modern notes as follows:--

Mixo-lydian _b-b*-c-d-e-e*-f-b_ Syntono-lydian _e-e*-f-a-c_ Phrygian _d-e-e*-f-a-b-b*-c-d_ Dorian _d-e-e*-f-a-b-b*-c-e_ Lydian _e*-f-a-b-b*-c-e-e*_ Ionian _e-e*-f-a-c-d_

Comparing these scales with the Species of the Octave, we find a certain amount of correspondence. As has been already noticed (p.