Greek Reflections on the Nature of Music

Greek Reflections on the Nature of Music PDF Author: Flora R. Levin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521518903
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this book, Flora Levin explores how and why music was so important to the ancient Greeks. She examines the distinctions that they drew between the theory of music as an art ruled by number and the theory wherein number is held to be ruled by the art of music. These perspectives generated more expansive theories, particularly the idea that the cosmos is a mirror-image of music's structural elements and, conversely, that music by virtue of its cosmic elements - time, motion, and the continuum - is itself a mirror-image of the cosmos. These opposing perspectives gave rise to two opposing schools of thought, the Pythagorean and the Aristoxenian. Levin argues that the clash between these two schools could never be reconciled because the inherent conflict arises from two different worlds of mathematics. Her book shows how the Greeks' appreciation of the profundity of music's interconnections with philosophy, mathematics, and logic led to groundbreaking intellectual achievements that no civilization has ever matched.

Greek Reflections on the Nature of Music

Greek Reflections on the Nature of Music PDF Author: Flora R. Levin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521518903
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this book, Flora Levin explores how and why music was so important to the ancient Greeks. She examines the distinctions that they drew between the theory of music as an art ruled by number and the theory wherein number is held to be ruled by the art of music. These perspectives generated more expansive theories, particularly the idea that the cosmos is a mirror-image of music's structural elements and, conversely, that music by virtue of its cosmic elements - time, motion, and the continuum - is itself a mirror-image of the cosmos. These opposing perspectives gave rise to two opposing schools of thought, the Pythagorean and the Aristoxenian. Levin argues that the clash between these two schools could never be reconciled because the inherent conflict arises from two different worlds of mathematics. Her book shows how the Greeks' appreciation of the profundity of music's interconnections with philosophy, mathematics, and logic led to groundbreaking intellectual achievements that no civilization has ever matched.

The Modes of Ancient Greek Music

The Modes of Ancient Greek Music PDF Author: D. B. Monro
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 100

Get Book Here

Book Description
'The Modes of Ancient Greek Music' by D. B. Monro is a comprehensive exploration of the long-standing controversy surrounding the nature of the ancient musical modes. The author provides a full discussion of the subject, using various sources such as Plato, Aristotle, and Aristoxenus. The book includes information on the early poets, the standard octachord system, the perfect system, the species of a scale, the musical notation, and the remains of Greek music. Monro also analyzes the credibility of Aristides Quintilianus and the evidence for scales of different species. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in ancient Greek music theory and its evolution.

Music in Ancient Greece and Rome

Music in Ancient Greece and Rome PDF Author: John G Landels
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134704860
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 427

Get Book Here

Book Description
Music in Ancient Greece and Rome provides a comprehensive introduction to the history of music from Homeric times to the Roman emperor Hadrian, presented in a concise and user-friendly way. Chapters include: * contexts in which music played a role * a detailed discussion of instruments * an analysis of scales, intervals and tuning * the principal types of rhythm used * and an exploration of Greek theories of harmony and acoustics. Music in Ancient Greece and Rome also contains numerous musical examples, with illustrations of ancient instruments and the methods of playing them.

Music, Text, and Culture in Ancient Greece

Music, Text, and Culture in Ancient Greece PDF Author: Tom Phillips
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019251329X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Get Book Here

Book Description
What difference does music make to performance poetry, and how did the ancients themselves understand this relationship? Although scholars have long recognized the importance of music to ancient performance culture, little has been written on the specific effects that musical accompaniment, and features such as rhythmical structure and melody, would have created in individual poems. This volume attempts to answer these questions by exploring more fully the relationship between music and language in the poetry of ancient Greece. Arranged into two parts, the essays in the first half engage closely with the evidential and interpretative challenges posed by the interaction of ancient music and poetry, and propose original readings of a range of texts by authors such as Homer, Pindar, and Euripides, as well as later poets such as Seikilos and Mesomedes. While they emphasize different formal features, they also argue collectively for a two-way relationship between music and language: attention to the musical features of poetic texts, insofar as we can reconstruct them, enables us to better understand not only their effects on audiences, but also the various ways in which they project and structure meaning. In the second part, the focus shifts to ancient attempts to conceptualize interactions between words and music; the essays in this section analyse the contested place that music occupied in the works of Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, and other critical writers of the Hellenistic and Imperial periods. Thinking about music is shown to influence other domains of intellectual life, such as literary criticism, and to be vitally informed by ethical concerns. These essays illustrate the importance of music for intellectual culture in ancient Greece and the ancients' abiding concern to understand and control its effects on human behaviour.

Ancient Greek Music

Ancient Greek Music PDF Author: M. L. West
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 9780191586859
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 452

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ancient Greece was permeated by music, and the literature teems with musical allusions. For most readers the subject has remained a closed book. Here at last is a clear, comprehensive, and authoritative account that presupposes no special knowledge of music. Topics covered include the place of music in Greek life; instruments; rhythm; tempo; modes and scales; melodic construction; form; ancient theory and notation; and historical development. Thirty surviving examples of Greek music are presented in modern transcription with analysis, and the book is fully illustrated. Besides being considered on its own terms, Greek music is here further illuminated by being seen in ethnological perspective, and a brief Epilogue sets it in its place in a border zone between Afro-Asiatic and European culture. The book will be of value both to classicists and historians of music. - ;The only available study in English of Ancient Greek music -

Musical Receptions of Greek Antiquity

Musical Receptions of Greek Antiquity PDF Author: Katerina Levidou
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 144389656X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 387

Get Book Here

Book Description
Musical Receptions of Greek Antiquity: From the Romantic Era to Modernism is a rich contribution to a topic of increasing scholarly interest, namely, the impact of Greek antiquity on modern culture, with a particular focus on music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This collection of essays offers a more comprehensive interdisciplinary examination of music’s interaction with Greek antiquity since the nineteenth century than has been attempted so far, analysing its connotations and repercussions. The volume sheds light on a number of hitherto underexplored case studies, and revisits and reassesses some well-known instances. Through scrutiny of a wide range of cases that extend from the Romantic era to experimentations of the second half of the twentieth century, the collection illuminates how the engagement with and interpretation of elements of ancient Greek culture in and through music reflect the specific historical, cultural and social contexts in which they took place. In analysing the multiple ways in which Greek antiquity inspired Western art music since the nineteenth century, the volume takes advantage of current interdisciplinary developments in musicology, as well as research on reception across various fields, including musicology, Slavic studies, modern Greek studies, Classics, and film studies. By encompassing a wide variety of case studies on repertories at the margins of the Western European art music tradition, while not excluding some central European ones, this volume broadens the focus of an increasingly rich field of research in significant ways.

Music in Ancient Greece

Music in Ancient Greece PDF Author: Spencer Klavan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350119954
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Get Book Here

Book Description
Life in ancient Greece was musical life. Soloists competed onstage for popular accolades, becoming centrepieces for cultural conversation and even leading Plato to recommend that certain forms of music be banned from his ideal society. And the music didn't stop when the audience left the theatre: melody and rhythm were woven into the whole fabric of daily existence for the Greeks. Vocal and instrumental songs were part of religious rituals, dramatic performances, dinner parties, and even military campaigns. Like Detroit in the 1960s or Vienna in the 18th century, Athens in the 400s BC was the hotspot where celebrated artists collaborated and diverse strands of musical tradition converged. The conversations and innovations that unfolded there would lay the groundwork for musical theory and practice in Greece and Rome for centuries to come. In this perfectly pitched introduction, Spencer Klavan explores Greek music's origins, forms, and place in society. In recent years, state-of-the-art research and digital technology have enabled us to decipher and understand Greek music with unprecedented precision. Yet many readers today cannot access the resources that would enable them to grapple with this richly rewarding subject. Arcane technical details and obscure jargon veil the subject - it is rarely known, for instance, that authentic melodies still survive from antiquity, helping us to imagine the vivid soundscapes of the Classical and Hellenistic eras. Music in Ancient Greece distills the latest discoveries into vivid prose so readers can come to grips with the basics as never before. With the tools in this book, beginners and specialists alike will learn to hear the ancient world afresh and come away with a new, musical perspective on their favourite classical texts.

Musical Thought In Ancient Greece

Musical Thought In Ancient Greece PDF Author: Edward A. Lippman
Publisher: Da Capo Press, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book Here

Book Description


Ancient Greek Music

Ancient Greek Music PDF Author: Stefan Hagel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139479814
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 505

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book endeavours to pinpoint the relations between musical, and especially instrumental, practice and the evolving conceptions of pitch systems. It traces the development of ancient melodic notation from reconstructed origins, through various adaptations necessitated by changing musical styles and newly invented instruments, to its final canonical form. It thus emerges how closely ancient harmonic theory depended on the culturally dominant instruments, the lyre and the aulos. These threads are followed down to late antiquity, when details recorded by Ptolemy permit an exceptionally clear view. Dr Hagel discusses the textual and pictorial evidence, introducing mathematical approaches wherever feasible, but also contributes to the interpretation of instruments in the archaeological record and occasionally is able to outline the general features of instruments not directly attested. The book will be indispensable to all those interested in Greek music, technology and performance culture and the general history of musicology.

Music and Musicians in Ancient Greece

Music and Musicians in Ancient Greece PDF Author: Warren D. Anderson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Music, Greek and Roman
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Drawing on a vast array of sources both in literature and in art, Warren D. Anderson here illuminates the place of musicians and music-making in Greek life from the Archaic to the Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman periods." "In his treatment of the musicians, Anderson addresses such topics as their costumes and sacral robes, their affinities with shamans and gods, the nature of their identification with the individual (the "outsider") or with the group, and their status as slaves or as freeborn citizens. As part of the larger picture, he discusses their instruments, principally the lyre or kithara and the double reed pipes, and he introduces the musical practices of other cultures as suggestive parallels." "Appendices include technical descriptions of the instruments, details of scale-building and notation, and fragmentary remains of actual texts with notation, among them settings of passages from Euripides' tragedies."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved