ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC The Greeks loved music. It was a way of honoring the gods, and making the world a more human, civilized place.godscivilized

INSTRUMENTS We do know what kind of instruments the Greeks had. They had pipes, and lyres, and drums, and cymbals. Pipes and drums were played in a loud, lively way, for dancing, and people played this music when they were worshipping Dionysos, the god of wine and parties.Dionysoswine

INSTRUMENTS The Greeks also had lyres, which are like small harps, and might have sounded something like a guitar. According to the Greek story, the first lyre was made from a turtle shell by the god Hermes when he was a baby, and then Hermes gave it to Apollo. Apollo was the god of reason and logic, and the Greeks thought of music as a great expression of order and patterns.HermesApolloreason

PLAYERS Both women and men played musical instruments. We often see them represented on vases. Wealthy boys were taught at school to play on the lyre, and to sing.school

PLAYERS Wealthy girls may have been taught at home, because they usually could not go to school. But most of the women we see playing instruments on vases seem to be poor women (often slaves) who are working as entertainers at parties for a living.slaves

COMPETITIONS Men, on the other hand, often competed for prizes in musical contests. Each town had its own competitions, and there were also competitions like the Olympic Games (in honor of Zeus) or the Pythian Games (in honor of Apollo) where men came from all over Greece to compete. A panel of judges decided who won.Olympic GamesZeusApollo

WORDS Some of the words we use to describe music today come from Greek words. The word “music” itself comes from the Greek Muses. Some Greek words that became English words are “rhythmos,” our word “rhythm”, and “melos” which now is our word “melody.”Muses

THE AULOS The principle woodwind of Classical antiquity is the aulos, consisting of a pair of cylindrical pipes with double reed mouthpieces. Originally made of reed stems, wood, or bone, at the Hellenistic age it became a refined instrument with an ivory core covered by a delicate mechanism of bronze or silver sliders and turning sleeves.

THE CITHARA The cithara (kithára) is the wooden type of the Greek lyre, especially the large concert instruments.

MUSIC COMPANIONS 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 known musician was Terpander of Lesbos (7th cent. B.C.).Terpander In the 6th cent. B.C., choral music was used in the drama, for which Pindar developed the classical ode. The main instruments at this time were the aulos, a type of oboe associated with the cult of Dionysus, and the kithara, a type of lyre associated with Apollo and restricted to religious and hymnic use.Pindarodekithara Finally, ancient Greek music lost its vitality and dwindled to insignificance under the Roman domination.

MUSICAL NOTATION There were two systems of musical notation, a vocal and an instrumental, both of which are, though still problematic. Only 15 musical fragments are extant, all which date from the postclassical period.musical notation Early in its history, Greek music benefited from the discovery, usually attributed to Pythagoras of Samos, of the numerical relations of tones to divisions of a stretched string. The temperament, or Pythagorean tuning, derived from this series of ratios has been important throughout subsequent music history. Pythagoras temperament

LEGENDS Musical instruments: legends about their invention. Flute and double flute (aulos), pipes of Pan, lyre [kithara] of Apollo. The god of music and harmony was Apollo. He was the leader of the nine muses (or "fairy" daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne) which include music, dance, poetry, comedy, history, etc.auloskitharathe nine muses

ACTIVITIES Look for information about: –The duel between Marsyas and Apollo. –The love story between Orpheus and Eurydice. Explain these stories to your classroom mates.

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