Musical Syncretism
and the
Greek Orientalizing Period

U.3011, Babylonian text listing strings
and tunings of the diatonic system

N.B. Some of my views have changed since the publication of this paper. See further the abstract for my book-in-progress.

This study identifies an occurrence of musical syncretism, a subject of much recent ethnomusicological scholarship, in the early Archaic period of Greece. The tradition that Terpander rejected "four voiced song" in favor of new hymns on the seven-stringed lyre (fragment 4 Gostoli) may be understood as alluding to an encounter between two musical traditions during the Orientalizing movement of c. 750-650 B.C. The seven-stringed lyre corresponds to the heptatonic classical music widely practiced in the ancient Near Eastern courts, as known from the diatonic tuning system documented in the cuneiform musical tablets. 'Four-voiced song' must be understood as describing the inherited melodic practice of the Greek epic singer. The syncretism of these two traditions may be deduced from the later Greek theorists and musicographers. A number of non-Aristoxenian sources define the microtonal genera as modifications of the diatonic, while Aristoxenus' own rule of 'continuity' or 'cohesion' (synecheia) required the genera to conform to minimum conditions of diatony.

'Musical Syncretism and the Greek Orientalizing Period' is published in E. Hickmann and R. Eichmann (ed.), Archäologie früher Klangerzeugung und Tonordnungen. Serie Studien zur Musikarchäologie, Orient-Archäologie (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Berlin, Orient-Abteilung, 2002). GET PDF.