Greek Music

Among the many extraordinary treasures that have been dug from the sands of Egypt are the musical papyri: scraps of papyrus containing musical notation.
While it is certainly true that we do not know specifically what the melodies of Sappho sounded like, or the choruses of Sophocles, the frequent complaint that ancient Greek music is "lost" is overstated. In fact, we know quite a lot: we know a great deal about the rhythms of the music, since these are reflected in the metrical patterns of Greek verse. We know much about the musical system, that is, how the scales were conceived and the like, since by a near miracle the works of several Greek musical theorists survive. We can infer much about the instruments, using as evidence surviving fragments of ancient instruments, depictions on vases and wall paintings, literary descriptions, and cross-cultural comparison. Most spectacularly, though, we also know something of the melodies, since over 30 melodies or collections of melodies come down to us. A couple are passed down through the medieval tradition. Five are preserved on stone inscriptions. The rest, however, survive on the waste paper of antiquity - papyrus - and many of these papyri have been published only recently.

In one corner of the small English drawing-room there was spread a table covered with mellow-looking sweetmeats, all as if the glow of sunset rested on their amber and crimson colours; and there were decanters containing mysterious liquids to match. In came one Greek gentleman after another with some short sentence, which burst forth as if it contained the perfection of joy. It was the Greek for "Christ is risen." Then all shook hands; the visitors tasted of the jewel-like sweetmeats, and rushed off to go somewhere else, and to have their places taken by other troops of friends. But we had no songs; nor do I know if, in our cold northern climate, the Greeks keep up the feast of the coming Spring. In Greece this is held on the first of March; the first of May would often he early greeting to the spring in England. At this pretty holiday, the children in their spring of human life join the young men, and go singing about the streets, and asking for small presents in honour of the soft and budding time; and every one gives them an egg, or some cheese, or some other simple produce of the country. The song they sing is one which, for its grace and the breath of spring and flowers which perfumes it, is known in many countries, as well as in Greece, under the name of the Song of the Swallow. The children carry about with them the figure of a swallow rudely cut in wood, and fastened to a kind of little windmill, which is turned by a piece of string fastened to a cylinder.

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