Unit Summary
Music of Ancient Greece


The music of ancient Greece provides a point of reference for Western European music throughout its history. Issues explored by the Greek theorists and philosophers reappear from time to time in discussions of music in later periods. Some questions addressed by Greek writers include the following:
  1. Are some types of music inherently better suited for particular occasions?
  2. What is the value of artistic activity and experience in individual lives and in society?
  3. How does the cultivation of music affect the human personality and character?
We may also find some of our own attitudes about music shaped by Greek musical and aesthetic theory.
For a variety of reasons, many of them discussed in your text, we do not know how ancient Greek music sounded. Moreover, scholars do not believe that we will be able to definitively reconstruct the few examples we have discovered. However, many ideals cultivated by classical Greek society (or retroactively attributed to that society) have exerted a powerful influence on the history of music. We may also be able to make some reasonable suppositions about the actual sound of the music by considering musical traditions of all the societies in the Mediterranean region.

Ancient Greek Instruments to know (by sight only for this period)

Concepts

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