John Curtis Franklin
(UCL):
Terpander: The Invention of Music in the Orientalizing Period
Joint report
by Examiners
This remarkable thesis aims at nothing less than a new paradigm in the history of Greek music. It argues that Greek music was revolutionised in the seventh century BC by the influence of Mesopotamian diatony, as one element of the larger "orientalising" movement of the period; and that the memory of this revolution is preserved both (i) in the structure and terminology of Greek music and (ii) in the literary and legendary traditions surrounding the enigmatic figure of Terpander. Ludwig Deubner had already argued in 1929, principally on the evidence of art, for a change in the early Archaic period from a four- to a seven-string lyre; the thesis seeks not only to defend this against counter-arguments since raised by sceptics, but to explain it musicologically in terms of a move from an older four-note scale [actually, from non-diatonic tone-structures of few pitches, but not necessarily four - JCF] to a fully diatonic scale structure on the Mesopotamian model. Here the smoking gun is a recently-deciphered text which has caused something of a sensation in Assyriological circles: the so-called "Retuning Text", which has enabled the system of Mesopotamian harmonic theory to be definitively reconstructed, and which is here argued to be the master key that unlocks the sense behind the seemingly-incoherent changes attested in the Greek tradition for music in the age of Terpander. Later chapters go on to unpick some features of the standard model of Greek musical evolution in the archaic and classical periods which seem to argue against his model, especially the alleged evidence for "defective" scales in early Greek music; and the thesis closes with detailed discussions of two specific Greek legacies claimed for the Mesopotamian system (the terminology of lyre-strings, and the role of the so-called "middle" note in scale construction).
The bravura argument displays an impressive command of widely diverse materials and disciplines, extending outwards from close interpretation of both literary and technical Greek texts to embrace Mycenaean and Indo-European philology; engagement with extremely technical Near Eastern texts (which he presents with remarkable lucidity, despite his confessed lack of direct expertise in the languages and scripts); detailed and sophisticated technical engagement with extremely difficult Greek technical writings on music, a highly specialised subject requiring not only the necessary mathematical and philosophical background but a high level of music-theoretical and ethnomusicological expertise; and the whole complex of historical and archaeological evidence for the nature, extent, and route of Greek contacts with the Near East from the Mycenaean period to the sixth century. He writes on these difficult and notoriously inaccessible topics with clarity, flair, and elegance, and while some of the convolutions of detailed argument fell short of convincing the examiners (especially some of the more tendentious interpretations of Greek musical and literary texts to fit his preconceived thesis), he responded thoughtfully in the viva to some of the doubts raised on specific points of argument and interpretation. We are happy to recommend the award of the degree.
W. Burkert (External)
N. J. Lowe (Internal)
23 January 2002