There is a long-standing and much-discussed interaction between music and language. First, there is the age-old debate of whether music is itself a language—“the universal language of mankind” as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow famously wrote in 1835. Indeed, the notion that music possesses characteristics of language has led some scholars to apply linguistic theories to the interpretation and understanding of music: semiotic analysis, information theory, and theories of generative grammar have all been employed to this end. Then there is the social dimension: both music and language act as forms of communication and vehicles for social bonding. Both engender shared emotional experiences; both promote appreciation of an art form; both are essential components of communal ceremonies, rituals, and rites of passage.
Indeed, our understanding of music and language is so closely interconnected that musicians process and remember music in the same way as linguists process and remember language. (Although, interestingly, when non-musicians listen to music, they do not process it in the same area of their brains as language.) Small wonder, then, that cognitive psychologists have discovered that people who study music before the age of seven develop larger vocabularies and a better understanding of grammar that those who do not.
Without question, music and language are inextricably bound to each other. But what about the relationship between music and a so-called ‘dead’ language? And how is this cross-curricular interaction evident in the music classroom?
When searching for opportunities for cross-curricular engagement, the music teacher is presented with an embarrassment of riches. The study of music is intrinsically interdisciplinary; it is essentially a body of literature (sounds and/or texts) to be studied and interpreted from whichever angle one chooses. The humanities-oriented musicologist might engage with history, aesthetics, philosophy, semiotics, hermeneutics, music criticism, anthropology, media studies, cultural studies, or theoretic sociology. The science-oriented musicologist, on the other hand, might engage with psychology, acoustics, psychoacoustics, physiology, cognitive neuroscience, or empirical sociology. One of the huge (and too-often overlooked) advantages of teaching music in the classroom, is that the possibilities for interdisciplinary inquiry are endless.
But the search for an interaction between music and Ancient Greek presents a special challenge. There are countless musical works which treat of Classical subjects. Thinking of just opera, I could mention Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (which tells the story of Orpheus’s descent into Hades), Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (based on Homer’s Odyssey) Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie (based on Racine’s play Phèdre), Handel’s Hercules, Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, numerous operas on the subject Alceste (Gluck, Handel, Lully), Heimer’s Amor und Psyche, Mozart’s Apollo et Hyacinthus, Roussel’s La Naissance de la lyre, Strauss’s operas Elektra and Ariadne auf Naxos, Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, Harrison Birtwistle’s The Minotaur, and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Greek (a retelling of Oedipus Rex). However, for the most part these are bastardised retellings of the ancient myths in modern or early-modern languages, set to music composed only in the last four hundred years, so are of little interest in this context.
On the other hand, scholarly inquiry into the music of Ancient Greece is significantly hampered by the fact that, in its concrete manifestations, it is almost entirely lost. The surviving manuscript sources comprise some twenty pieces, or fragments of pieces, many of uncertain date and spread over a period of seven centuries (and the authenticity of some sources is far from certain). Together, they transmit the equivalent of fewer than 1,000 bars of music. Experts in organology have precious little else to go on: the few surviving auloi, for example, have lost their mouthpieces.
On the theoretical side, more has survived, including the main features of the impressive system of Aristoxenus (4th century BC), the Harmonics of Claudius Ptolemy (2nd century BC), and several other treatises. By my count, fewer than twenty Ancient Greek musicians are known by name; fewer still have been survived by concrete evidence of their music-making.
By far the largest body of evidence is iconographic: museums the world over are awash with images of Apollo and Orpheus with their lyres; Pan instructing Daphnis on the flute; and countless scenes of anonymous musicians, some of them warriors, and their instruments.
In short: there survives sufficient evidence to invite speculation, but too little to draw any firm conclusions about what Ancient Greek music actually sounded like.
This said, there do exist a number of specialist musical groups, such as Melpomen and Ensemble Kérylos, who have dedicated themselves to exploring the possible sounds of Ancient Greece through performance experiments and practice-led research.
But we do know that music was absolutely central to Ancient Greek civilisation. As with any society, ancient or modern, the lives of the Ancient Greeks were accompanied by music at births, marriages, funerals, religious ceremonies, theatrical productions, and in the form of folk music.
But music had a much deeper meaning to the Greeks. The doctrine of ethos, as explained by Plato and Aristotle, was based on the belief that music has a direct effect upon man’s soul and his actions. As a result, the Greek political and social systems were intertwined with music. To support music’s fundamental role in their society, the Greeks developed an intricate scientific rationale of music encompassing tuning, instruments, modes, and rhythms.
Indeed, it is through the language of music theory that Music and Ancient Greek interact most closely today. The English word ‘music’ itself derives from the Greek mousikos, which referred to all the arts governed by Zeus’s nine daughters—the Muses.
At New College School, where I arrived as Director of Music in September 2019, my colleagues and I are on a mission to encourage our pupils to think critically about the music they listen to.
While revising and updating the music curriculum, revisiting old topics and creating new courses, we have been astonished to find just how many musical keywords derive from Ancient Greek.
In the classroom, too, I have been struck by how even a basic understanding of Greek grammar can help my pupils deepen their understanding and appreciation of music, and also how it greatly improves their ability to articulate their thoughts in clear and concise terms.
The musical dictionary is filled with important terminology derived from Ancient Greek. Even words as indispensable as ‘melody’ have their origins in Greek—melody is a combination of melos (‘song’) and aoidein (“to sing”). When we speak of rhythm, we use descriptors such as ‘polyrhythmic’ (the simultaneous use of two or more conflicting rhythms), ‘syncopation’ (off-beat), or ‘hemiola’ (a shift between triple and duple metre)—all derived from Greek. Harmony, too, is approached through a Greek-derived vocabulary with words such as ‘diatonic’ (the notes proper to the scale, mode, or key), ‘chromatic’ (notes outside the classical scale or mode, used to add colour to a melody; derived from the Greek chroma, meaning ‘colour’), and ‘pentatonic’ (five-note scale).
The names of the seven modes—essential knowledge for the study of Gregorian chant, Medieval, Renaissance, Folk, and early twentieth-century music—are themselves derived from the names of different areas of the Ancient Greek empire: ‘Ionian’ (a region on the western coast of Anatolia, now Turkey), ‘Dorian’ (one of the four major ethnic groups of the Hellenes), ‘Phrygian’ (Phrygia in Asia Minor, now Asian Turkey), ‘Lydian’ (an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor), ‘Mixolydian,’ ‘Aeolian’ (another Hellenic tribe), and ‘Locrian’ (the region of Locris).
All the primary descriptors for texture are Greek: ‘polyphony’ (two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody), ‘heterophony’ (simultaneous variation of a single melodic line), ‘monophony’ (a single part), ‘homophony’ (all parts sounding together), ‘antiphony’ (two or more parts alternating), and ‘cacophony’ (a discordant mixture of sounds).
In short: the musical dictionary is awash with terms derived from Greek: from ‘acoustics’ to ‘euphonium,’ ‘hymn’ to ‘psalm,’ ‘chorus’ to ‘ode,’ ‘symphony’ to ‘metronome’. The vocabulary I have identified above represents a sample of those specialist terms I would expect my pupils to know when they leave NCS. As my pupils progress in their musical education, they will meet more advanced terminology also derived from Greek. But I hope that when they encounter terms such as ‘diapente,’ ‘arsis’ and ‘thesis,’ and ‘stentato’ for the first time, they will employ the same interdisciplinary musical and linguistic skills they gained in both their Classics and Music classrooms.
A final thought. The study of Classical languages requires a rigorous approach to technical aspects, but also a certain poetic sensibility. To be successful classicists, pupils must not only acquire knowledge of vocabulary and grammar, but also the skills to respond to a body of text in ways which go far beyond the mere juxtaposition of vocabulary—towards meaning, interpretation, and nuance. In this sense, the study of ancient languages is analogous to the study of “the universal language of mankind”.
