ANCIENT MUSIC HISTORY
There are two excellent sources for finding out what the Greeks played of an evening: Plutarch and .... Plato. Yes, the philosopher spent large amounts of time discussing with his friends (for example Socrates) the types of music and instruments most suitable for a model state. In the course of these discussions, detail is revealed about the music of the time.
Prior to Plato's time, Homer was the first major writer ("The Odyssey") and to set the musical scene he can be quoted on songs:
"What is it people always want to hear?
The latest tune that's warbled through the air"
("The Odyssey" i 352)
But Plato (below) isn't interested in the latest hit, "for the methods of music cannot be stirred up without great upheavals of social custom and law".
Plato
There is a collection of Plato called "The Great Dialogues", translated by W H D Rouse, Mentor Books (Penguin). In Book III of "The Republic" is a full discussion of musical issues
The groovy Greek thinker and his friends lay down the "how" of how music should be presented (in a "safe" conservative society):
They talk of "the manner of song and melody" ....
Lyric poetry was a song usually accompanied by the lyre and/or the (double) pipes ("aulos": see below). Plato says that "lyric poetry" is comprised of "words and tune and rhythm": this compares to our modern idea of music itself (without words) being melody, harmony and rhythm. So the Greeks apparently saw the musical elements of melody and harmony as being simply "tune", or mixed up together.
Next, they say the tune and rhythm should "follow the words". This is discussing how to perform a rendition of tales and stories, one of the main formats for music in ancient Greece. It raises the question, did the Greeks write music for its own sake, eg: adding the words later? Or is this just Plato's idea of what a stable society should have for music?
The "tune"
The scales are listed, and evaulated for their various characteristics and purposes. Plato writes off several of the scales as being not useful for a city state:
"Mixed Lydian and high or sharp Lydian, and a few like them" are for dirges, and so are not to be used: "they are useless even for women if they are to be decent, much more for men".
Ionian scales and some of the Lydians are "soft and fit for a drinking party", "relaxing": the thinkers think that this isn''t too useful for their ideal state, where everybody should be ready for battle!
That leaves just the Dorian and Phrygian scales, what Plato calls the "violent scale" and the "free-will scale" (being useful for warriors). This means that Plato has no use for music made by "a host of strings and [with] endless modulations from key to key in our songs and melodies. So we will have no .... gitterns (a 1500s type of guitar) or instruments of many strings and many keys, and the craftsmen of these we will not harbour".
I imagine Leo Fender would have been deported from ancient Greece, never mind Stradivarius.
Pipes (the "aulos" - blown at the end like an oboe) are considered way too far out. Plato dismisses pipes as the "most multi-stringed instrument of all", no doubt because of the broad range of sounds and feelings possible.
Note the ancient Greek Benny Goodman blowing his swinging solo at right. The astonishing thing about this picture is that it actually looks like a photo of Benny Goodman's quartet, which included Lionel Hampton on vibraphone - the table looks like a set of vibes!
It looks as though pipes were useful for breadmaking ....
That leaves, for the philosophers, the lyre and the harp, and to Plato "they are useful in the city".
"In the country .... the herdsmen would have some kind of panpipes". plato makes reference to Appollo, who was a lyre god (literally), and how he defeated Marsyas the pipe-blowing satyr in a musical contest. The Muses found Appollo to be the winner, and Appollo killed Marsyas.
Appollo and his lyre
The enraptured players below are clearly really getting into playing their "multi-stringed" instruments. These ancient Jimi Hendrixes are adopting poses familiar to fans of rock guitar heroes. The Greeks staged competitions for virtuosos of, for example, the kithara, the instrument being pounded below.
Left to right: Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Steve Vai?
Rhythm:
Having dealt with the "correct" scales and type of tune, Plato turns to rhythm. Was the Gary Glitter beat popular, or did they like four on the floor?
The word: "fine rhythm follows a good style of speech and is like it" ... "as we said, rhythm and tune follow the word, not word follows these". Hey man, you're tying up my innovative rhythms: but then, John Lennon said all you do to write a song is fit some rhyming words to a beat. ["Writing a song is easy. You think of something you want to say, make it rhyme, and put it to a beat": John Lennon].
It sounds as if Plato agrees with that. A lot of detail as to rhythm is set out.
[The above is at 398 - 400E of "The Republic"]
Plutarch
What does the more relaxed Plutarch (45-125? AD) say about music in ancient Greece (some centuries before his time, of course)?
In his "The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives", there are several mentions made of music in ancient Greek life.
Writing about the Greek hero and leader Themistocles, he says
"No man was ever more ambitious than Themistocles. While he was still young and quite unknown, he prevailed upon Epicles of Hermione, a harp player who was greatly admired by the Athenians [note that Plato approved of the harp: above] to come and practise at his house, because he wanted the honour of having many people seek out his home and come there often to see him". Obviously the harp was a draw.
Boy bands?
Various prominant people were responsible for putting together and training a chorus for the annual Athens festival. A type of producer, in other words: Plato was an organiser. Plutarch writes that these "performances were given in the first case by male flautists and in the second by a chorus of boys trained to sing and dance".
Writing about the great leader Pericles, Plutarch says:
"At the same time, still in pursuit of distinction, Pericles had a decree passed to establish a musical contest as part of the Panathenaic festival". Elected as one of the stewards, Pericles laid down rules as to "how the competitors should sing or play the flute or the lyre".
And, giving away the origin of the Hammersmith Odeon, he says that from then on audiences came to "the Odeon to hear these .... contests".
OTHER WEBSITES FOR ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
There are some great websites on ancient Greek music eg:
This is a brilliant site, with excellent pictures as well. Some of the pictures are included in this week's discoveries.
There is also a very good summary of ancient Greek music on an Austrian university site put together by the author and musicologist Stefan Hagel, published in 2005:
S. Hagel / Ch. Harrauer (edd.), Ancient Greek Music in Performance. Book & Audio CD. Vienna 2005
The website is
You can hear apparently all of the surviving melodies, or what survives of them.
There is also a page each devoted to what are described as the two main instruments of ancient Greece, the aulos (double reed pipes) and cithara, or kithara (wooden type of Greek lyre).
Here we see the two main Greek instruments, the stable "lyre of state"at left and the offically less-favored satyr-played pipes at right.
Click on "aulos" and "kithara" to hear several examples of each, and thus rock out to ancient Greek grooves.
The site explains:
"This site contains all published fragments of Ancient Greek music which consist of more than a few scattered notes. All of them are recorded under the use of tunings whose exact ratios have been transmitted to us by ancient theoreticians (of the Pythagorean school, most of them cited by Ptolemaios)."
Extraordinarily, the site also has a reference on music of the ancient Near East: you can hear short performances of music found on cuneiform tablets. The files are MIDI, unlike the Greek samples, which are mp3.
MUSIC IN LITERATURE: BEGINNING IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
So what did ancient instruments sound like? Look at the texts.
Horace
Describes a "seven string tortoise". See my photo of a similar instrument in a display of Greek instruments at the British Museum, London in "Photo Gallery " (go to main page).
Cicero
Cicero, the famous Roman orator and founder of liberal thought, on dancing: when defending an official (Lucius Murena) against corruption charges, Cicero turns to humour ....
"Cato calls Lucius Murena a dancer. Such a reproach, if true, denotes an energetic prosecutor .... [Can you] produce stong evidence? What you need to do is to look around for the other vices which would also have to exist in someone who could rightly be accused of being a dancer .... Hardly anyone dances when he is sober .... First there needs to be extended partying, a charming venue, and an array of pleasures - and only then comes dancing." ("Pro Murena", page 72 "Defence Speeches", Oxford's World Classics)
Ovid
The Roman lyric poet, famous for his book on how to pick up ("Ars Amatoria" or "Amores" - "The Art Of Love") refers to someone playing a "chord on the lyre": so they played chords back then!
In his "Orpheus and Euridice", from the large volume of poems on ancient myths and legends, "Metamorphosis", Ovid descibes Orpheus playing: "so to the music of his strings he sang ....". People strummed and sang, accompanying themselves on, for example, the lyre (Page 226, Oxford).
Petronius (the era of Nero)
Petronius was a hedonist who lived at the time of Nero. His "Satyricon" describes a series of outrageous adventures.
There are several musical references: in addition to a character testing a room for acoustics with his singing, we find:
"Then with a great crash of cymbles a girl musician strode in, woke up the remaining sleepers (and the party began all over again)"
"A musician with a miniature flute trotted along at Trimalchio's head and during the entire trip played played into his master's ear as though whispering him little secrets"
"Then the orchestra blared and the trays were snatched away from the tables"
At Trimalchios dinner/banquet: "Then he ordered a brass band sent into the dining room .... the band blared a .... march .... but one of the slaves blew so loudly that he woke up the entire neighbourhood."
Romans were brassy! Blares and crashes.
"Meanwhile some of the other guests were cavorting around the edge of the pool and screeching out popular songs". Were popular songs of this time only good for screeching, or were the revellers screechers?
Plutarch
Plutarch was a Greek historian who lived about 100AD. He wrote two or three books of biographies of famous (and legendary) Greek and Roman figures. He is famous for being funny and not omitting personal details of his subjects.
On the Roman dictator Sulla:
"[He had] a character that was very irregular and full of inconsistencies .... a number of popular songs were composed on the subject of his marriage to a very useful match, at the age of fifty."
Plutarch on Roman leader Pompey (later replaced by Caeser):
Pompey married Cornelia, "who had many charming qualities apart from her youth and beauty eg: good knowledge of literature, of playing the lyre, and of geometry. And she was a regular and intelligent listener to lectures on philosophy." So women could knock one off on the lyre.
There is a colourful picture painted of the lifestyle of the pirates of the Mediterranean, whom Pompey defeated (about 50BC). Plutarch writes: "the odious arrogance of it all" [the pirates] .... "the gilded sails, the purple awnings, the silvered oars" .... "Roman supremacy was brought into contempt by their flute playing, their stringed instruments, their drunken revels along every coast, ...."
So you had a dissolute time by playing stringed instruments and the flute? Were trumpets and cymbals more associated with order and formal occasions, such as dinners and processionals?
From ancient times we move forward to the 1200s and early 1300s, the time of Dante, famous for the "Divine Comedy" from which the recent arty English rock band took its name. The "Divine Comedy" is about Dante's journey, largely accompanied by the Roman poet Virgil, through Hell and Purgatory to finally Paradise. That's where the musical references come in.
Dante
So you want someone to go to Hell?! Let Dante be your guide ....
From the Paradiso section of "The Divine Comedy", Canto XII line 8:
"Song which which surpassed our muses as such
And our sirens, in those sweet trumpets"
So trumpets must have sounded pleasant, and not a Roman blare, by the thirteenth century!
The paradise experience is extended in Canto XVII, line 44:
"As sweet organ music comes to the ear"
Organs were up and running, and must have sounded good. It wasn't just choirs of monks. The Romans also had organs, pumped by water. Who knows what they sounded like?
We jump 450 years to the time of the French author Voltaire, in the mid 1700s.
Voltaire
Voltaire lays into what passed for opera at the time: the "bad tragedies set to music, with all those scenes that have been put together simply as pretexts .... for two or three ridiculous songs that allow an actress to show off her vocal chords. .... a castrato humming the roles of Caesar and Cato and strutting about the stage in that ungainly fashion" (from his novel "Candide"). Voltaire was writing about opera seria, the more formal version of opera that vanished with the arrival of Mozart and opera buffa. And when women took over the higher voiced roles!
Tolstoy
Tolstoy's novel "War And Peace" has a description of a Russian performance of an opera in about 1870, the time of Verdi and Tchaikovsky, among others. He is such a good writer that you really see the scene from the opera he is describing (it is written from the view point of a character who is seeing her first opera):
"Smooth boards formed the centre of the stage, at the side stood painted canvasses representing trees, and in the background was a cloth stretched over boards. In the middle of the stage sat some girls in red bodices and white petticoats. One .... girl in a white silk dress was sitting apart on a low bench, to the back of which a piece of green cardboard was glued. They were all singing something. When they had finished their chorus the girl in white advanced towards the prompter's box, and a man with stout legs encased in silk tights, a plume in his cap and a dagger at his waist, went up to her and began to sing and wave his arms about".
That's a pretty good picture of an opera performance in nineteenth century Russia. You can see it thanks to Tolstoy's gift.