"Elamite Orchestra": Relief from the palace of Assurbanipal,
Nineveh (British Museum)
TERPANDER:
The Invention of Music
in the Orientalizing Period
JOHN
CURTIS FRANKLIN
PhD
Dissertation, Classics
University College London 2002
Advisor:
Richard Janko (London)
Examiners:
Nick Lowe (London)
Walter Burkert (Zürich)
EXAMINERS' REPORT
9/2005 I have now broken the links to many chapters of my dissertation.
I have modified many of my earlier views, while those that remain are
expressed more clearly and accurately in my subsequent publications, to
which I provide directions below. The chapters which deal with the Archaic
Greek heptachord, its epicentric string structure, and the important function
of the central string—the Middle
Muse—are also somewhat dated in my mind, but as I have not treated
these subjects elsewhere I shall keep them available for the time being.
I have also left the chapter which relates the reconstruction of the Mesopotamian
tuning cycle as being a useful introduction to the subject. The index
locorum and bibliography may also be of use.
8/2004 N.B. I have noticed that a number of websites have now linked to
this page, citing it as an authority for various reasons. I hasten to
point out, therefore, that the following abstract has been reproduced
verbatim from my 2002 UCL dissertation, but that two years of further
research and discussion with colleagues has caused me to modify my views
somewhat. In the book I am preparing, I still defend the thesis that the
Greek evidence preserves vestiges of the Old Babylonian (< Ur Dynastic
III, Sumerian) version of diatonic music with its practical and theoretical
emphasis on a central string. I am no longer certain, however, that the
system's transmission took place in the Orientalizing Period; I am now
convinced that the seven-stringed lyre survived in Cyprus and those areas
of the Aegean where Bronze Age Achaean culture persisted, such as Athens,
Euboea, Lesbos, Arcadia, Crete, Smyrna. The question then becomes whether
the Mesopotamian approach to diatony was known in the Minoan and Mycenaean
palaces -- as the Ugaritic evidence might suggest -- or whether it revitalized
a Bronze Age Aegean tradition during the Orientalizing period, via Phoenician
or Neo-Assyrian influence (as Cypriot and Lydian evidence might suggest).
See further the abstract for my
book-in-progress.
ABSTRACT
The legend that Terpander rejected "four voiced song" in favor
of new songs on the seven-stringed lyre (fragment 4 Gostoli) epitomizes
an encounter between two musical traditions during the Greek Orientalizing
period (c. 750-650 B.C.), catalyzed by the westward expansion of the Assyrian
empire. The seven-stringed lyre answers clearly to the heptatony which
was widely practiced in the ancient Near East, 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. Though
diatonic scales were also known in Greece, even the late theorists remembered
that pride of place was given to other forms of heptatony—the chromatic
and enharmonic genera, tone structures which cannot be established solely
through the resonant intervals of the diatonic method. Nevertheless, these
tunings were consistently seen as modifications of the diatonic—which
Aristoxenus believed to be the "oldest
and most natural" of the genera—and were required to conform
to minimum conditions of diatony. Thus the Greek tone structures represent
the overlay of native musical inflections on a borrowed diatonic substrate,
and the creation of a distinctly Hellenized form of heptatonic music.
More specific points of contact are found in the string nomenclatures,
which in both traditions are arranged to emphasize a central string. There
is extensive Greek evidence relating this "epicentric" structure
to musical function, with the middle string a sort of tonal center of
constant pitch, while the other strings could change from tuning to tuning.
So too in the Mesopotamian system the central string remained constant
throughout the diatonic tuning cycle.
I realise that there are infelicities, errors and omissions in the dissertation. Revisions are under way, and I welcome any comments, corrections, and other criticism which will improve the work for its eventual publication as The Middle Muse: Mesopotamian Echoes in Archaic Greek Music.
THIS DISSERTATION MAY BE DOWNLOADED IN PDF FORMAT:
Prefatory
Material (Title Page, Abstract, Table of Contents, Abbreviations,
Acknowledgements)
1. Introduction
PART ONE: THE MELIC REVOLUTION
2. Terpander’s Lyre: The Orientalizing Period in Greek Music (see
now here and here)
3. Homer’s Lyre: The Indo-European Music-stream (see now here)
4. The Lyre of Orpheus: Palatial Music in the Bronze Age (see now here)
5. The Lyre of Hermes: The Invention of Music (see now here)
PART TWO: THE SYMPHONIC CIRCLE
6. The
Babylonian Tuning Cycle
7. The Diatonic Genus (see now here,
here and here)
8. Quaestio
Errorum Plena:
The Archaic Heptachord
9. The
Epicentric Strings
10. The
Symphonic Circle in Greece
APPENDIX A: The Etymology of Harmonia
APPENDIX B: Cuneiform Texts: U3011
- CBS
10996 -
UET 7/74 - Graphic
Representation of Tuning Cycle
Index
Locorum
Bibliography
