Greek music definition of Greek music in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

Greek music, the music of the ancient and modern inhabitants of Greece.

Ancient Greek Music

The music of ancient Greece was inseparable from poetry and dancing. It was entirely monodic, there being no harmony as the term is commonly understood. The earliest music is virtually unknown, but in the Homeric era a national musical culture existed that was looked upon by later generations as a "golden age." The chief instrument was the phorminx, a lyre used to accompany poet-singers who composed melodies from nomoi, short traditional phrases that were repeated. The earliest known musician was Terpander Terpander (tûrpăn`dər), fl. c.675 B.C., musician of Lesbos, one of the earliest founders of Greek classical music.
..... Click the link for more information. of Lesbos (7th cent. B.C.). The lyric art of Archilochus Archilochus (ärkĭl`əkəs), fl. c.700 or c.650 B.C., Greek poet, b. Paros.
..... Click the link for more information. , Sappho Sappho (săf`ō), fl. early 6th cent. B.C., greatest of the early Greek lyric poets (Plato calls her "the tenth Muse"), b.
..... Click the link for more information. , and Anacreon Anacreon (ənăk`rēən, –ŏn), c.570–c.485 B.C., Greek lyric poet, b. Teos in Ionia.
..... Click the link for more information. was also musical in nature.

In the 6th cent. B.C., choral music was used in the drama, for which Pindar Pindaric ode refers to a verse form used primarily in England in the 17th and 18th cent. The form, based on a somewhat faulty understanding of the metrical pattern used by Pindar, originated with Abraham Cowley in his Pindarique Odes
..... Click the link for more information. developed the classical ode ode, elaborate and stately lyric poem of some length. The ode dates back to the Greek choral songs that were sung and danced at public events and celebrations.
..... Click the link for more information. . The main instruments at this time were the aulos, a type of oboe associated with the cult of Dionysus, and the kithara kithara (kĭth`ərə) or cithara
..... Click the link for more information. , a type of lyre associated with Apollo and restricted to religious and hymnic use. This classical style of composition decayed in the last quarter of the 5th cent. B.C.

After the fall of Athens in 404 B.C., an anti-intellectual reaction took place against the classical art, and by about 320 B.C. it was almost forgotten. The new style, which resulted in the rise of professional musicians, was marked by subjective expression, free forms, more elaborate melody and rhythms, and chromaticism. The chief musical figures were Phrynis of Mitylene (c.450 B.C.), his pupil Timotheus Timotheus (tĭmō`thēəs), c.450–c.357 B.C., Greek poet and musician of Miletus.
..... Click the link for more information. of Miletus, and the dramatist Euripides Euripides (yrĭp`ĭdēz), 480 or 485–406 B.C.
..... Click the link for more information. . Finally, ancient Greek music lost its vitality and dwindled to insignificance under the Roman domination.

There were two systems of musical notation musical notation, symbols used to make a written record of musical sounds.

Two different systems of letters were used to write down the instrumental and the vocal music of ancient Greece. In his five textbooks on music theory Boethius (c.A.D. 470–A.D.
..... Click the link for more information. , a vocal and an instrumental, both of which are, though still problematic. They are decipherable largely because of the Introduction to Music written by Alypius Alypius or Alypios (both: əlĭp`ēəs), fl. c.
..... Click the link for more information. (c.A.D. 360). In spite of the prominent position of music in the cultural life of ancient Greece, only 15 musical fragments are extant, all which date from the postclassical period. Early in its history, Greek music benefited from the discovery, usually attributed to Pythagoras Pythagoreans are best known for two teachings: the transmigration of souls and the theory that numbers constitute the true nature of things. The believers performed purification rites and followed moral, ascetic, and dietary rules to enable their souls to achieve a higher rank in
..... Click the link for more information. of Samos, of the numerical relations of tones to divisions of a stretched string. The temperament temperament, in music, the altering of certain intervals from their acoustically correct values to provide a system of tuning whereby music can move from key to key without unacceptably impure sonorities.
..... Click the link for more information. , or Pythagorean tuning, derived from this series of ratios has been important throughout subsequent music history.

Modern Greek Music

Dormant for nearly two thousand years, Greek music underwent a musical rebirth in the 19th cent. with the works of the opera composers Nikolaos Mantzaros (1795–1872), Spyridion Xyndas (1812–96), and Spyros Samaras (1861–1917). Elements of nationalism are prevalent in the folklike songs of George Lembalet (1875–1945) and Manos Hadjidakis (1925–94). Introduced in Greece by Nikos Skalkottas (1904–49), serial music serial music, the body of compositions whose fundamental syntactical reference is a particular ordering (called series or row) of the twelve pitch classes—C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B—that constitute the equal-tempered scale.
..... Click the link for more information. has been composed by Yorgos Sicilianos and by Iannis Xenakis Xenakis, Yannis or Iannis (yän`ĭs zānä`kĭs)
..... Click the link for more information. , who also writes electronic music electronic music or electro-acoustic music, term for compositions that utilize the capacities of electronic media for creating and altering sounds.
..... Click the link for more information. . During the late 20th cent. Greece's most popular composer was probably Mikis Theodorakis (1925–), whose opposition to military rule during the 1960s and 70s cost him several years of imprisonment and precipitated the banning of his operas, symphonic works, film scores (most notably for Zorba the Greek), and hundreds of songs.

Bibliography

See C. Sachs, The Rise of Music in the Ancient World (1943); E. A. Lippman, Musical Thought in Ancient Greece (1964).