The notes which enter into this melody form the scale f♯-g-a-b-c♯-d-e-f♯, which is an octave of the Dorian species (e-e on the white notes). Hence if f♯, 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♯-e, which point to the key of a major, with the difference that the Seventh is flat (g instead of g♯). 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 circumflex denoted a rise followed on the same syllable by a lower note—every such rise and fall being quite independent both of syllabic quantity and of stress or ictus. Thus in ordinary speech the accents formed a species of melody,—logôdes ti melos, as it is called by Aristoxenus [40]. When words were sung this 'spoken melody' was no longer heard, being superseded by the melody proper. Dionysius of Halicarnassus 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):—
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 arbylês is as high as the second, though that is the only accented syllable: (3) the first syllable of tithete is lower than the two others, instead of being higher: (4) the circumflex of ktypeite is lost (êphanistai), because the word is all on the same pitch; (5) the fourth syllable of 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 hoson, which begins the melody, and in esti, for which we should perhaps read the orthotone esti. Of the four instances of the circumflex 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 (zês) the next note is a Third lower: but it does not seem to belong to the circumflexed 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. Assuming 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 Score [Listen]
It should be observed that in the fragment the line katolophyromai katolophyromai comes before 338 (materos k.t.l.), not after it, as in our texts [41].
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 Hypatê Mesôn to Tritê Diezeugmenôn. But in either case the lowest note (g) finds no place in the System, since it can only be the Diatonic Lichanos Hypatôn. 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 Hypatê—the note, in fact, which we have already met with under the name of Hyper-hypatê (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 (olo)phypomai, and again on the words en brotois, viz. the notes a♯ a* a (if the genus is the Enharmonic). The same notes occur in reversed order on akatou and (kat)eklusen. This seems to bear out the common view of the Enharmonic as produced by the introduction of an 'accidental' or passing 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 pronounce the mode to be the Phrygian (g-g in the key with one ♭, 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 [42]. 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).
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 Quintilianus (p. 21 Meib.) of the six Modes (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 (tetrachordikai diaireseis) which the most ancient musicians used for the harmoniai, and that these were sometimes greater in compass 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. 22), the names Syntono-lydian and Lydian answer to the ordinary Lydian and Hypo-lydian respectively. Accordingly the Lydian of Aristides agrees with the Hypo-lydian species as given in the pseudo-Euclidean Introductio. The Dorian of Aristides is the Dorian species of the Introductio, but with an additional note, a tone below the Hypatê.
The Phrygian of Aristides is not the Enharmonic Phrygian species; but it is derived from the diatonic Phrygian octave d-e-f-g-a-b-c-d by inserting the enharmonic notes e* and b*, and omitting the diatonic g. By a similar process the Mixo-lydian of Aristides may be derived from the diatonic octave b-b, except that a as well as g is omitted, and on the other hand d is retained. If the scale of the Syntono-lydian is completed by the lower c (as analogy would require), it will answer similarly to the Lydian species (c-c).
But what weight can be given to Aristides as an authority on the music of the time of Plato? The answer to this question depends upon several considerations.
1. The date of Aristides is unknown. He is certainly later than Cicero, since he quotes the De Republica (p. 70 Meib.). From the circumstance that he makes no reference to the musical innovations of Ptolemy it has been supposed that he was earlier than that writer. But, as Aristides usually confines himself to the theory of Aristoxenus and his school, the argument from silence is not of much value. On the other hand he gives a scheme of notation containing two characters, sharp and sharp, which extend the scale two successive semi-tones beyond the lowest point of the notation given by Alypius [43]. For this reason it is probable that Aristides is one of the latest of the writers on ancient music.
2. The manner in which Aristides introduces his information about the Platonic Modes is highly suspicious. He has been describing the various divisions of the tetrachord according to the theory of Aristoxenus, and adds that there were anciently other divisions in use. So far Aristides is doubtless right, since Aristoxenus himself says that the divisions of the tetrachord are theoretically infinite in number (p. 26 Meib.),—that it is possible, for example, to combine the Parhypatê of the Soft Chromatic with the Lichanos of the Diatonic (p. 52 Meib.). But all this concerns the genus of the scale, and has nothing to do with the species of the Octave, with which Aristides proceeds to connect it. It follows either that there is some confusion in the text, or that Aristides was compiling from sources which he did not understand.
3. The Platonic Modes were a subject of interest to the early musical writers, and were discussed by Aristoxenus himself (Plut. de Mus. c. 17). If Aristoxenus had had access to such an account as we have in Aristides, we must have found some trace of it, either in the extant Harmonics or in the quotations of Plutarch and other compilers.
4. Of the four scales which extend to the compass of an octave, only one, viz. the Dorian, conforms to the rules which are said by Aristoxenus to have prevailed in early Greek music. The Phrygian divides the Fourth a-d into four intervals instead of three, by the sequence a b b* c d. As has been observed, it is neither the Enharmonic Phrygian species (c e e* f a b b* c), nor the Diatonic d-d, but a mixture of the two. Similarly the Mixo-lydian divides the Fourth b-e into four intervals (b b* c d e), by introducing the purely Diatonic note d. The Lydian is certainly the Lydian Enharmonic species of the pseudo-Euclid; but we can hardly suppose that it existed in practical music. Aristoxenus lays it down emphatically that a quarter-tone is always followed by another: and we cannot imagine a scale in which the highest and lowest notes are in no harmonic relation to the rest.
5. Two of the scales are incomplete, viz. the Ionian, which has six notes and the compass of a Seventh, and the Syntono-lydian, which consists of five notes, with the compass of a Minor Sixth. We naturally look for parallels among the defective scales noticed in the Problems and in Plutarch's dialogues. But we find little that even illustrates the modes of Aristides. The scales noticed in the Problems (xix. 7, 32, 47) are hepta-chord, and generally of the compass of an octave. In one passage of Plutarch (De Mus. c. 11) there is a description—quoted from Aristoxenus—of an older kind of Enharmonic, in which the semitones had not yet been divided into quarter-tones. In another chapter (c. 19) he speaks of the omission of the Tritê and also of the Nêtê as characteristic of a form of music called the spondeiakos tropos. It may be said that in the Ionian and Syntono-lydian of Aristides the Enharmonic Tritê (b*) and the Nêtê (e) are wanting. But the Paramesê (b) is also wanting in both these modes. And the Ionian is open to the observation already made with regard to the Phrygian, viz. that the two highest notes (c d) involve a mixture of Diatonic with Enharmonic scale. We may add that Plutarch (who evidently wrote with Aristoxenus before him) gives no hint that the omission of these notes was characteristic of any particular modes.
6. It is impossible to decide the question of the modes of Aristides without some reference to another statement of the same author. In the chapter which treats of Intervals (pp. 13-15 Meib.) he gives the ancient division of two octaves, the first into dieses or quarter-tones, the second into semitones. The former of these (hê para tois archaiois kata dieseis harmonia) is as follows:
Two Octaves
After every allowance has been made for the probability that these signs or some of them have reached us in a corrupt form, it is impossible to reduce them to the ordinary notation, as Meibomius sought to do. The scholar who first published them as they stand in the MSS. (F. L. Perne, see Bellermann, Tonleitern, p. 62) regarded them as a relic of a much older system of notation. This is in accordance with the language of Aristides, and indeed is the only view consistent with a belief in their genuineness. They are too like the ordinary notation to be quite independent, and cannot have been put forward as an improvement upon it. Are they, then, earlier? Bellermann has called our attention to a peculiarity which seems fatal to any such claim. They consist, like the ordinary signs, of two sets, one written above the other, and in every instance one of the pair is simply a reversed or inverted form of the other. With the ordinary signs this is not generally the case, since the two sets, the vocal and instrumental notes, are originally independent. But it is the case with the three lowest notes, viz. those which were added to the series at a later time. When these additional signs were invented the vocal and instrumental notes had come to be employed together. The inventor therefore devised a pair of signs in each case, and not unnaturally made them correspond in form. In the scale given by Aristides this correspondence runs through the whole series, which must therefore be of later date. But if this is so, the characters can hardly represent a genuine system of notation. In other words, Aristides must have been imposed upon by a species of forgery.
7. Does the fragment of the Orestes tell for or against the Modes described by Aristides?
The scale which is formed by the notes of the fragment agrees, so far as it extends, with two of the scales now in question, viz. the Phrygian and the Dorian. Taking the view of its tonality expressed in the last chapter (p. 93), we should describe it as the Dorian scale of Aristides with the two highest notes omitted. The omission, in so short a fragment, is of little weight; and the agreement in the use of an additional lower note (Hyper-hypatê) is certainly worth notice. On the other hand, the Dorian is precisely the mode, of those given in the list of Aristides, which least needs defence, as it is the most faithful copy of the Perfect System. Hence the fact that it is verified by an actual piece of music does not go far in support of the other scales in the same list.
If our suspicions are well-founded, it is evident that they seriously affect the genuineness of all the antiquarian learning which Aristides sets before his readers, and in particular of his account of the Platonic modes. I venture to think that they go far to deprive that account of the value which it has been supposed to have for the history of the earliest Greek music.
For the later period, however, to which Aristides himself belongs, these apocryphal scales are a document of some importance. The fact that they do not agree entirely with the species of the Octave as given by the pseudo-Euclid leads us to think that they may be influenced by scales used in actual music. This applies especially to the Phrygian, which (as has been shown) is really diatonic. The Ionian, again, is perhaps merely an imperfect form of the same scale, viz. the octave d-d with lower d omitted. And the Syntono-lydian may be the Lydian diatonic octave c-c with a similar omission of the lower c.
The object of the foregoing discussion has been to show, in the first place, that there was no such distinction in ancient Greek music as that which scholars have drawn between Modes (harmoniai) and Keys (tonoi or tropoi): and, in the second place, that the musical scales denoted by these terms were primarily distinguished by difference of pitch,—that in fact they were so many keys of the standard scale known in its final form as the Perfect System. The evidence now brought forward in support of these two propositions is surely as complete as that which has been allowed to determine any question of ancient learning.
It does not, however, follow that the Greeks knew of no musical forms analogous to our Major and Minor modes, or to the mediaeval Tones. On the contrary, the course of the discussion has led us to recognise distinctions of this kind in more than one instance. The doctrine against which the argument has been mainly directed is not that ancient scales were of more than one species or 'mode' (as it is now called), but that difference of species was the basis of the ancient Greek Modes. This will become clear if we bring together all the indications which we have observed of scales differing from each other in species, that is, in the order of the intervals in the octave. In doing so it will be especially important to be guided by the principle which we laid down at the outset, of arranging our materials according to chronology, and judging of each piece of evidence strictly with reference to the period to which it belongs. It is only thus that we can hope to gain a conception of Greek music as the living and changing thing that we know it must have been.
1. The principal scale of Greek music is undoubtedly of the Hypo-dorian or common species. This is sufficiently proved by the facts (1) that two octaves of this species (a-a) constitute the scale known as the Greater Perfect System, and (2) that the central a of this system, called the Mesê, is said to have been the key-note, or at least to have had the kind of importance in the scale which we connect with the key-note (Arist. Probl. xix. 20). This mode, it is obvious, is based on the scale which is the descending scale of the modern Minor mode. It may therefore be identified with the Minor, except that it does not admit the leading note.
It should be observed that this mode is to be recognised not merely in the Perfect System but equally in the primitive octave, of the form e-e, out of which the Perfect System grew. The important point is the tonic character of the Mesê (a), and this, as it happens, rests upon the testimony of an author who knows the primitive octave only. The fact that that octave is of the so-called Dorian species does not alter the mode (as we are now using that term), but only the compass of the notes employed.
The Hypo-dorian octave is seen in two of the scales of the cithara given by Ptolemy (p. 85), viz. those called tritai and tropoi, and the Dorian octave (e-e) in two scales, parupatai and ludia. It is very possible (as was observed in commenting on them) that the two latter scales were in the key of a, and therefore Hypo-dorian in respect of mode. The Hypo-dorian mode is also exemplified by three at least of the instrumental passages given by the Anonymus (supra, p. 89).
2. The earliest trace of a difference of species appears to be found in the passage on the subject of the Mixo-lydian mode quoted above (p. 24) from Plutarch's Dialogue on Music. In that mode, according to Plutarch, it was discovered by a certain Lamprocles of Athens that the Disjunctive Tone was the highest interval, that is to say, that the octave in reality consisted of two conjunct tetrachords and a tone:
Disjunctive Tone
[Listen]
As the note which is the meeting-point of the two tetrachords is doubtless the key-note, we shall not be wrong in making it the Mesê, and thus finding the octave in question in the Perfect System and in the oldest part of it, viz. the tetrachords Mesôn and Synêmmenôn, with the Nêtê Diezeugmenôn. How then did this octave come to be recognised by Lamprocles as distinctively Mixo-lydian? We cannot tell with certainty, because we do not know what the Mixo-lydian scale was before his treatment of it. Probably, however, the answer is to be sought in the relation in respect of pitch between the Dorian and Mixo-lydian keys. These, as we have seen (p. 23), were the keys chiefly employed in tragedy, and the Mixo-lydian was a Fourth higher than the other. Now when a scale consisting of white notes is transposed to a key a Fourth higher, it becomes a scale with one ♭. In ancient language, the tetrachord Synêmmenôn (a-b♭-c-d) takes the place of the tetrachord Diezeugmenôn. In some such way as this the octave of this form may have come to be associated in a special way with the use of the Mixo-lydian key.
However this may be, the change from the tetrachord Diezeugmenôn to the tetrachord Synêmmenôn, or the reverse, is a change of mode in the modern sense, for it is what the ancients classified as a change of System (metabolê kata systêma) [44]. Nor is it hard to determine the two 'modes' concerned, if we may trust to the authority of the Aristotelian Problems (l. c.) and regard the Mesê as always the key-note. For if a is kept as the key-note, the octave a-a with one ♭ is the so-called Dorian (e-e on the white notes). In this way we arrive at the somewhat confusing result that the ancient Dorian species (e-e but with a as key-note) yields the Hypo-dorian or modern Minor mode: while the Dorian mode of modern scientific theory [45] has its ancient prototype in the Mixo-lydian species, viz. the octave first brought to light by Lamprocles. The difficulty of course arises from the species of the Octave being classified according to their compass, without reference to the tonic character of the Mesê.
The Dorian mode is amply represented in the extant remains of Greek music. It is the mode of the two compositions of Dionysius, the Hymn to Calliope and the Hymn to Apollo (p. 88), perhaps also of Mr. Ramsay's musical inscription (p. 90). It would have been satisfactory if we could have found it in the much more important fragment of the Orestes. Such indications as that fragment presents seem to me to point to the Dorian mode (Mixo-lydian of Lamprocles).
3. The scales of the cithara furnish one example of the Phrygian species (d-d), and one of the Hypo-phrygian (g-g): but we have no means of determining which note of the scale is to be treated as the key-note.
In the Hymn to Nemesis, however, in spite of the incomplete form in which it has reached us, there is a sufficiently clear example of the Hypo-phrygian mode. It has been suggested as possible that the melody of Mr. Ramsay's inscription is also Hypo-phrygian, and if so the evidence for the mode would be carried back to the first century.
The Hypo-phrygian is the nearest approach made by any specimen of Greek music to the modern Major mode,—the Lydian or c-species not being found even among the scales of the cithara as given by Ptolemy. It is therefore of peculiar interest for musical history, and we look with eagerness for any indication which would allow us to connect it with the classical period of Greek art. One or two sayings of Aristotle have been thought to bear upon this issue.
The most interesting is a passage in the Politics (iv. 3, cp. p. 13), where Aristotle is speaking of the multiplicity of forms of government, and showing how a great number of varieties may nevertheless be brought under a few classes or types. He illustrates the point from the musical Modes, observing that all constitutions may be regarded as either oligarchical (government by a minority) or democratical (government by the majority), just as in the opinion of some musicians (hôs phasi tines) all modes are essentially either Dorian or Phrygian. What, then, is the basis of this grouping of certain modes together as Dorian, while the rest are Phrygian in character? According to Westphal it is a form of the opposition between the true Hellenic music, represented by Dorian, and the foreign music, the Phrygian and Lydian, with their varieties. Moreover, it is in his view virtually the same distinction as that which obtains in modern music between the Minor and the Major scales [46]. This account of the matter, however, is not supported by the context of the passage. Aristotle draws out the comparison between forms of government and musical modes in such a way as to make it plain that in the case of the modes the distinction was one of pitch (tas suntonôteras ... tas d' aneimenas kai malakas). The Dorian was the best, because the highest, of the lower keys,—the others being Hypo-dorian (in the earlier sense, immediately below Dorian), and Hypo-phrygian—while Phrygian was the first of the higher series which took in Lydian and Mixo-lydian. The division would be aided, or may even have been suggested, by the circumstance that it nearly coincided with the favourite contrast of Hellenic and 'barbarous' modes [47]. There is another passage, however, which can hardly be reconciled with a classification according to pitch alone. In the chapters dealing with the ethical character of music Aristotle dwells (as will be remembered) upon the exciting and orgiastic character of the Phrygian mode, and notices its especial fitness for the dithyramb. This fitness or affinity, he says, was so marked that a poet who tried to compose a dithyramb in another mode found himself passing unawares into the Phrygian (Pol. viii. 7). It is natural to understand this of the use of certain sequences of intervals, or of cadences, such as are characteristic of a 'mode' in the modern sense of the word, rather than of a change of key. If this is so we may venture the further hypothesis that the Phrygian music, in some at least of its forms, was distinguished not only by pitch, but also by the more or less conscious use of scales which differed in type from the scale of the Greek standard system.
It may be urged that this hypothesis is inconsistent with our interpretation of the passage of the Problems about the tonic character of the Mesê. If a is key-note, it was argued, the mode is that of the a-species (Hypo-dorian, our Minor), or at most—by admitting the tetrachord Synêmmenôn—it includes the e-species (Dorian of Helmholtz). The answer may be that the statement of the Problems is not of this absolute kind. It is not the statement of a technical writer, laying down definite rules, but is a general observation, or at best a canon of taste. We are not told how the predominance of the Mesê is shown in the form of the melody. Moreover this predominance is not said to be exercised in music generally, but in all good music (panta gar ta chrêsta melê pollakis tê mesê chrêtai). This may mean either that tonality in Greek music was of an imperfect kind, a question of style and taste rather than of fixed rule, or that they occasionally employed modes of a less approved stamp, unrecognised in the earlier musical theory.
The considerations set forth in the last chapter seem to show that if difference of mode or species cannot be entirely denied of the classical period of Greek music, it occupied a subordinate and almost unrecognised place.
The main elements of the art were, (1) difference of genus,—the sub-divisions of the tetrachord which Aristoxenus and Ptolemy alike recognise, though with important discrepancies in detail; (2) difference of pitch or key; and (3) rhythm. Passing over the last, as not belonging to the subject of Harmonics, we may now say that genus and key are the only grounds of distinction which are evidently of practical importance. No others were associated with the early history of the art, with particular composers or periods, with particular instruments, or with the ethos of music. This, however, is only true in the fullest sense of Greek music before the time of Ptolemy. The main object of Ptolemy's reform of the keys was to provide a new set of scales, each characterised by a particular succession of intervals, while the pitch was left to take care of itself. And it is clear, especially from the specimens which Ptolemy gives of the scales in use in his time, that he was only endeavouring to systematise what already existed, and bring theory into harmony with the developments of practice. We must suppose, therefore, that the musical feeling which sought variety in differences of key came to have less influence on the practical art, and that musicians began to discover, or to appreciate more than they had done, the use of different 'modes' or forms of the octave scale. Along with this change we have to note the comparative disuse of the Enharmonic and Chromatic divisions of the tetrachord. The Enharmonic, according to Ptolemy, had ceased to be employed. Of the three varieties of Chromatic given by Aristoxenus only one remains on Ptolemy's list, and that the one which in the scheme of Aristoxenus involved no interval less than a semitone. And although Ptolemy distinguished at least three varieties of Diatonic, it is worth notice that only one of these was admitted in the tuning of the lyre,—the others being confined to the more elaborate cithara. In Ptolemy's time, therefore, music was rapidly approaching the stage in which all its forms are based upon a single scale—the natural diatonic scale of modern Europe.
In the light of these facts it must occur to us that Westphal's theory of seven modes or species of the Octave is really open to an a priori objection as decisive in its nature as any of the testimony which has been brought against it. Is it possible, we may ask, that a system of modes analogous to the ecclesiastical Tones can have subsisted along with a system of scales such as the genera and 'colours' of early Greek music? The reply may be that Ptolemy himself combines the two systems. He supposes five divisions of the tetrachord, and seven modes based upon so many species of the Octave—in all thirty-five different scales (or seventy, if we bring in the distinction of octaves apo nêtês and apo mesês). But when we come to the scales actually used on the chief Greek instrument, the cithara, the number falls at once to six. Evidently the others, or most of them, only existed on paper, as the mathematical results of certain assumptions which Ptolemy had made. And if this can be said of Ptolemy's theory, what would be the value of a similar scheme combining the modes with the Enharmonic and the different varieties of the Chromatic genus? The truth is, surely, that such a scheme tries to unite elements which belong to different times, which in fact are the fundamental ideas of different stages of art.
The most striking characteristic of Greek music, especially in its earlier periods, is the multiplicity and delicacy of the intervals into which the scale was divided. A sort of frame-work was formed by the division of the octave into tetrachords, completed by the so-called disjunctive tone; and so far all Greek music was alike. But within the tetrachord the reign of diversity was unchecked. Not only were there recognised divisions containing intervals of a fourth, a third, and even three-eighths of a tone, but we gather from several things said by Aristoxenus that the number of possible divisions was regarded as theoretically unlimited. Thus he tells us that there was a constant tendency to flatten the 'moveable' notes of the Chromatic genus, and thus diminish the small intervals, for the sake of 'sweetness' or in order to obtain a plaintive tone [48];— that the Lichanos of a tetrachord may in theory be any note between the Enharmonic Lichanos (f in the scale e-e*-f-a) and the Diatonic (g in the scale e-f-g-a) [49];— and that the magnitude of the smaller intervals and division of the tetrachord generally belongs to the indefinite or indeterminate element in music [50]. Moreover, in spite of the disuse of several of the older scales, much of this holds good for the time of Ptolemy. The modern diatonic scale is fully recognised by him, but only as one of several different divisions. And the division which he treats as the ordinary or standard form of the octave is not the modern diatonic scale, but one of the so-called 'soft' or flattened varieties. It is clear that in the best periods of Greek music these refinements of melody, which modern musicians find scarcely conceivable, were far from being accidental or subordinate features. Rather, they were as much bound up with the fundamental nature of that music as complex harmony is with the music of modern Europe.
The mediaeval modes or Tones, on the other hand, are essentially based on the diatonic scale,—the scale that knows only of tones and semitones. To suppose that they held in the earliest Greek music the prominent place which we find assigned to the ancient Modes or harmoniai is to suppose that the art of music was developed in Greece in two different directions, under the influence of different and almost opposite ideas. Yet nothing is more remarkable in all departments of Greek art than the strictness with which it confines itself within the limits given once for all in the leading types, and the consequent harmony and consistency of all the forms which it takes in the course of its growth.
The dependence of artistic forms in their manifold developments upon a central governing idea or principle has never been more luminously stated than by the illustrious physicist Helmholtz, in the thirteenth chapter of his Tonempfindungen. I venture to think that in applying that truth to the facts of Greek music he was materially hindered by the accepted theory of the Greek modes. The scales which he analyses under that name were certainly the basis of all music in the Middle Ages, and are much more intelligible as such than in relation to the primitive Greek forms of the art [51].
Several indications combine to make it probable that singing and speaking were not so widely separated from each other in Greek as in the modern languages with which we are most familiar.
(1) The teaching of the grammarians on the subject of accent points to this conclusion. Our habit of using Latin translations of the terms of Greek grammar has tended to obscure the fact that they belong in almost every case to the ordinary vocabulary of music. The word for 'accent' (tonos) is simply the musical term for 'pitch' or 'key.' The words 'acute' (oxys) and 'grave' (barys) mean nothing more than 'high' and 'low' in pitch. A syllable may have two accents, just as in music a syllable may be sung with more than one note. Similarly the 'quantity' of each syllable answers to the time of a musical note, and the rule that a long syllable is equal to two short ones is no doubt approximately correct. Consequently every Greek word (enclitics being reckoned as parts of a word) is a sort of musical phrase, and every sentence is a more or less definite melody—logôdes ti melos, as it is called by Aristoxenus (p. 18 Meib.). Moreover the accent in the modern sense, the ictus or stress of the voice, appears to be quite independent of the pitch or 'tonic' accent: for in Greek poetry the ictus (arsis) is determined by the metre, with which the tonic accent evidently has nothing to do. In singing, accordingly, the tonic accents disappear; for the melody takes their place, and gives each syllable a new pitch, on which (as we shall presently see) the spoken pitch has no influence. The rise and fall of the voice in ordinary speaking is perceptible enough in English, though it is more marked in other European languages. Helmholtz tells us—with tacit reference to the speech of North Germany—that an affirmative sentence generally ends with a drop in the tone of about a Fourth, while an interrogative is marked by a rise which is often as much as a Fifth [52]. In Italian the interrogative form is regularly given, not by a particle or a change in the order of the words, but by a rise of pitch. The Gregorian church music, according to a series of rules quoted by Helmholtz (l. c.), marked a comma by a rise of a Tone, a colon by a fall of a Semitone; a full stop by a Tone above, followed by a Fourth below, the 'reciting note'; and an interrogation by a phrase of the form d b c d (c being the reciting note).
These examples, however, do little towards enabling modern scholars to form a notion of the Greek system of accentuation. In these and similar cases it is the sentence as a whole which is modified by the tonic accent, whereas in Greek it is the individual word. It is true that the accent of a word may be affected by its place in the sentence: as is seen in the loss of the accent of oxytone words when not followed by a pause, in the anastrophe of prepositions, and in the treatment of the different classes of enclitics. But in all these instances it is the intonation of the word as such, not of the sentence, which is primarily concerned. What they really prove is that the musical accent is not so invariable as the stress accent in English or German, but may depend upon the collocation of the word, or upon the degree of emphasis which it has in a particular use.
(2) The same conclusion may be drawn from the terms in which the ancient writers on music endeavour to distinguish musical and ordinary utterance.
Aristoxenus begins his Harmonics by observing that there are two movements of the voice, not properly discriminated by any previous writer; namely, the continuous, which is the movement characteristic of speaking, and the discrete or that which proceeds by intervals, the movement of singing. In the latter the voice remains for a certain time on one note, and then passes by a definite interval to another. In the former it is continually gliding by imperceptible degrees from higher to lower or the reverse [53]. In this kind of movement the rise and fall of the voice is marked by the accents (prosôdiai), which accordingly form the melody, as it may be called, of spoken utterance [54]. Later writers state the distinction in much the same language. Nicomachus tells us that the two movements were first discriminated by the Pythagoreans. He dwells especially on the ease with which we pass from one to the other. If the notes and intervals of the speaking voice are allowed to be separate and distinct, the form of utterance becomes singing [55]. Similarly Aristoxenus says that we do not rest upon a note, unless we are led to do so by the influence of feeling (an mê dia pathos pote eis toiautên kinêsin anankasthômen elthein).
According to the rhetorician Dionysius of Halicarnassus the interval used in the melody of spoken utterance is approximately a Fifth, or three tones and a half (dialektou men oun melos heni metreitai diastêmati tô legomenô dia pente, hôs engista; kai oute epiteinetai pera tôn triôn tonôn kai hêmitoniou epi to oxy oute anietai tou chôriou toutou pleion epi to bary [56]). He gives an interesting example (quoted above on p. 91) from the Orestes of Euripides, to show that when words are set to music no account is taken of the accents, or spoken melody. Not merely are the intervals varied (instead of being nearly uniform), but the rise and fall of the notes does not answer to the rise and fall of the syllables in ordinary speech. This statement is rendered the more interesting from the circumstance that the inscription discovered by Mr. Ramsay (supra, p. 89), which is about a century later, does exhibit precisely this correspondence. Apparently, then, the melody of the inscription represents a new idea in music,—an attempt to bring it into a more direct connexion with the tones of the speaking voice. The fact of such an attempt being made seems to indicate that the divergence between the two kinds of utterance was becoming more marked than had formerly been the case. It may be compared with the invention of recitative in the beginning of the seventeenth century.
Aristides Quintilianus (p. 7 Meib.) recognises a third or intermediate movement of the voice, viz. that which is employed in the recitation of poetry. It is probable that Aristides is one of the latest writers on the subject, and we may conjecture that in his time the Greek language had in great measure lost the original tonic accents, and with them the quasi-melodious character which they gave to prose utterance.
In the view which these notices suggest the difference between speaking and singing is reduced to one of degree. It is analysed in language such as we might use to express the difference between a monotonous and a varied manner of speaking, or between the sounds of an Aeolian harp and those of a musical instrument.
(3) What has been said of melody in the two spheres of speech and song applies also mutatis mutandis to rhythm. In English the time or quantity of syllables is as little attended to as the pitch. But in Greek the distinction of long and short furnished a prose rhythm which was a serious element in their rhetoric. In the rhythm of music, according to Dionysius, the quantity of syllables could be neglected, just as the accent was neglected in the melody [57]. This, however, does not mean that the natural time of the syllables could be treated with the freedom which we see in a modern composition. The regularity of lyric metres is sufficient to prove that the increase or diminution of natural quantity referred to by Dionysius was kept within narrow limits, the nature of which is to be gathered from the remains of the ancient system of Rhythmic. From these sources we learn with something like certainty that the rhythm of ordinary speech, as determined by the succession of long or short syllables, was the basis not only of metres intended for recitation, such as the hexameter and the iambic trimeter, but also of lyrical rhythm of every kind.
(4) As to the use of the stress accent in Greek prose we are without direct information. In verse it appears as the metrical ictus or arsis of each foot, which answers to what English musicians call the 'strong beat' or accented part of the bar [58]. In the Homeric hexameter the ictus is confined to long syllables, and appears to have some power of lengthening a short or doubtful syllable. In the Attic poetry which was written in direct imitation of colloquial speech, viz. the tragic and comic trimeter, there is no necessary connexion between the ictus and syllabic length: but on the other hand a naturally long syllable which is without the ictus may be rhythmically short. In lyrical versification the ictus does not seem to have any connexion with quantity: and on the whole we may gather that it was not until the Byzantine period of Greek that it came to be recognised as a distinct factor in pronunciation. The chief elements of utterance—pitch, time and stress—were independent in ancient Greek speech, just as they are in music. And the fact that they were independent goes a long way to prove our main contention, viz. that ancient Greek speech had a peculiar quasi-musical character, consequently that the difficulty which modern scholars feel in understanding the ancient statements on such matters as accent and quantity is simply the difficulty of conceiving a form of utterance of which no examples can now be observed.
The conception which we have thus been led to form of ancient Greek as it was spoken is not without bearing on the main subject of these pages. For if the language even in its colloquial form had qualities of rhythm and intonation which gave it this peculiar half musical character, so that singing and speaking were more closely akin than they ever are in our experience, we may expect to find that music was influenced in some measure by this state of things. What is there, then, in the special characteristics of Greek music which can be connected with the exceptional relation in which it stood to language?
Greek music was primarily and chiefly vocal. Instrumental music was looked upon as essentially subordinate,—an accompaniment or at best an imitation of singing. For in the view of the Greeks the words (lexis) were an integral part of the whole composition. They contained the ideas, while the music with its variations of time (rhythmos) and pitch (harmonia) furnished a natural vehicle for the appropriate feelings. Purely instrumental music could not do this, because it could not convey the ideas or impressions fitted to be the object of feeling. Hence we find Plato complaining on this ground of the separation of poetry and music which was beginning to be allowed in his time. The poets, he says, rend asunder the elements of music; they separate rhythm and dance movements from melody, putting unmusical language into metre, and again make melody and rhythm without words, employing the lyre and the flute without the voice: so that it is most difficult, when rhythm and melody is produced without language, to know what it means, or what subject worthy of the name it represents (kai hotô eoike tôn axiologôn mimêmatôn). It is utterly false taste, in Plato's opinion, to use the flute or the lyre otherwise than as an accompaniment to dance and song [59]. Similarly in the Aristotelian Problems (xix. 10) it is asked why, although the human voice is the most pleasing, singing without words, as in humming or whistling, is not more agreeable than the flute or the lyre. Shall we say, the writer answers, 'that the human voice too is comparatively without charm if it does not represent something? (ê oud' ekei, ean mê mimêtai, homoiôs hêdy?) That is to say, music is expressive of feeling, which may range from acute passion to calm and lofty sentiment, but feeling must have an object, and this can only be adequately given by language. Thus language is, in the first instance at least, the matter to which musical treatment gives artistic form. In modern times the tendency is to regard instrumental music as the highest form of the art, because in instrumental music the artist creates his work, not by taking ideas and feelings as he finds them already expressed in language, but directly, by forming an independent vehicle of feeling,—a new language, as it were, of passion and sentiment,—out of the absolute relations of movement and sound.
The intimate connexion in Greek music between words and melody may be shown in various particulars. The modern practice of basing a musical composition—a long and elaborate chorus, for example—upon a few words, which are repeated again and again as the music is developed, would have been impossible in Greece.
It becomes natural when the words are not an integral part of the work, but only serve to announce the idea on which it is based, and which the music brings out under successive aspects. The same may be said of the use of a melody with many different sets of words. Greek writers regard even the repetition of the melody in a strophe and antistrophe as a concession to the comparative weakness of a chorus. With the Greeks, moreover, the union in one artist of the functions of poet and musician must have tended to a more exquisite adaptation of language and music than can be expected when the work of art is the product of divided labour. In Greece the principle of the interdependence of language, metre, and musical sound was carried very far. The different recognised styles had each certain metrical forms and certain musical scales or keys appropriated to them, in some cases also a certain dialect and vocabulary. These various elements were usually summed up in an ethnical type, one of those which played so large a part in their political history. Such a term as Dorian was not applied to a particular scale at random, but because that scale was distinctive of Dorian music: and Dorian music, again, was one aspect of Dorian temper and institutions, Dorian literature and thought.
Whether the Greeks were acquainted with harmony—in the modern sense of the word—is a question that has been much discussed, and may now be regarded as settled [60]. It is clear that the Greeks were acquainted with the phenomena on which harmony depends, viz. the effect produced by sounding certain notes together. It appears also that they made some use of harmony,—and of dissonant as well as consonant intervals,—in instrumental accompaniment (krousis).
On the other hand it was unknown in their vocal music, except in the form of bass and treble voices singing the same melody. In the instrumental accompaniment it was only an occasional ornament, not a necessary or regular part of the music. Plato speaks of it in the Laws as something which those who learn music as a branch of liberal education should not attempt [61]. The silence of the technical writers, both as to the use of harmony and as to the tonality of the Greek scale, points in the same direction. Evidently there was no system of harmony,—no notion of the effect of successive harmonies, or of two distinct parts or progressions of notes harmonising with each other.
The want of harmony is to be connected not only with the defective tonality which was probably characteristic of Greek music,—we have seen (p. 42) that there is some evidence of tonality,—but still more with the non-harmonic quality of many of the intervals of which their scales were composed. We have repeatedly dwelt upon the variety and strangeness (to our apprehension) of these intervals. Modern writers are usually disposed to underrate their importance, or even to explain them away. The Enharmonic, they point out, was produced by the interpolation of a note which may have been only a passing note or appoggiatura. The Chromatic also, it is said, was regarded as too difficult for ordinary performers, and most of its varieties went out of use at a comparatively early period. Yet the accounts which we find in writers so remote in time and so opposed in their theoretical views as Aristoxenus and Ptolemy, bear the strongest testimony to the reality and persistence of these non-diatonic scales.
And we have the decisive fact that of the six scales of the cithara given by Ptolemy (see p. 85) not one is diatonic in the modern sense of the word. It may be alleged on the other side that the ideal scale in the Timaeus of Plato is purely diatonic, and exhibits the strictest Pythagorean division. But that scale is primarily a framework of mathematical ratios, and could not take notice of intervals which had not yet been identified with ratios. It is not certain when the discovery of Pythagoras was extended to the non-diatonic scales. Even in the Sectio Canonis of Euclid there is no trace of knowledge that any intervals except those of the Pythagorean diatonic scale had a numerical or (as we should say) physical basis [62]. In Plato's time, as we can see from a well-known passage of the Republic (quoted on p. 53), the Enharmonic and Chromatic scales were the object of much zealous study and experiment on the part of musicians of different schools,—some seeking to measure and compare the intervals directly by the ear, others to find numbers in the consonances which they heard, and both, from the Platonic point of view, 'setting ears above intelligence,' and therefore labouring in vain [63].
The multiplicity of intervals, then, which surprises us in the doctrine of the genera and 'colours' was not an accident or excrescence. And although some of the finer varieties, such as the Enharmonic, belong only to the early or classical period, there is enough to show that it continued to be characteristic of the Greek musical system, at least until the revival of Hellenism in the age of the Antonines. The grounds of this peculiarity may be sought partly in the Greek temperament. We can hardly deny the Greeks the credit of a fineness of sensibility upon which civilisation, to say the least, has made no advance. We may note further how entirely it is in accordance with the analogies of Greek art to find a series of artistic types created by subtle variations within certain well-defined limits. For the present purpose, however, it will be enough to consider how the phenomenon is connected with other known characteristics of Greek music,—its limited compass and probably imperfect tonality, the thin and passionless quality of its chief instrument, on the other hand the keen sense of differences of pitch, the finely constructed rhythm, and finally the natural adaptation, on which we have already dwelt, between the musical form and the language.
The last is perhaps the feature of greatest significance, especially in a comparison of the ancient and modern types of the art. The beauty and even the persuasive effect of a voice depend, as we are more or less aware, in the first place upon the pitch or key in which it is set, and in the second place upon subtle variations of pitch, which give emphasis, or light and shade. Answering to the first of these elements ancient music, if the main contention of this essay is right, has its system of Modes or keys. Answering to the second it has a series of scales in which the delicacy and variety of the intervals still fill us with wonder. In both these points modern music shows diminished resources. We have in the Keys the same or even a greater command of degrees of pitch: but we seem to have lost the close relation which once obtained between a note as the result of physical facts and the same note as an index of temper or emotion. A change of key affects us, generally speaking, like a change of colour or of movement—not as the heightening or soothing of a state of feeling. In respect of the second element of vocal expression, the rise and fall of the pitch, Greek music possessed in the multiplicity of its scales a range of expression to which there is no modern parallel. The nearest analogue may be found in the use of modulation from a Major to a Minor key, or the reverse. But the changes of genus and 'colour' at the disposal of an ancient musician must have been acoustically more striking, and must have come nearer to reproducing, in an idealised form, the tones and inflexions of the speaking voice. The tendency of music that is based upon harmony is to treat the voice as one of a number of instruments, and accordingly to curtail the use of it as the great source of dramatic and emotional effect. The consequence is twofold. On the one hand we lose sight of the direct influence exerted by sound of certain degrees of pitch on the human sensibility, and thus ultimately on character. On the other hand the music becomes an independent creation. It may still be a vehicle of the deepest feeling: but it no longer seeks the aid of language, or reaches its aim through the channels by which language influences the mind of man.