770 music and musical instruments: Rome The Greek god Apollo with a kithara, a stringed instrument similar to a lyre (Alison Frantz Photographic Collection, American School of Classical Studies at Athens) contexts; percussion instruments (which included cymbals, castanets, and hand-held drums) were used in entertainment and in ecstatic religious worship Our knowledge of how Greek music actually sounded comes largely from numerous ancient works on music theory, based on the tuning of stringed instruments The fundamental unit of the Greek scale was the tetrachord: four tones, with the top and bottom forming an interval of a fourth and the other two varying An octave scale or mode could be built up of two tetrachords, with varying combinations possible, named after their alleged national origin (for example, Dorian, Lydian, or Phrygian) The sequence of intervals in most was different from our major and minor scales The Dorian, for example, roughly corresponded to a scale played entirely on the white keys of a piano starting on E The modes, however, had varying tonal centers: In a modern scale, the lowest note is the tonic, with the function of other notes determined in relation to it; for a Greek mode the tonal center might lie elsewhere Tuning of instruments was also different: Octaves were not necessarily divided into equal parts as in modern equal-temperament systems Furthermore, the size of intervals could vary: Modern systems use only the whole tone and the semitone, but the Greeks made frequent use of quarter tones and other small intervals (non-Western musical traditions and some innovative jazz and modern composers make use of such intervals) Greek music was almost entirely melodic rather than harmonic; that is, in most cases only one note was played or sung at a time Choruses sang in unison or in octaves; although the musical accompaniment may have played a different note from the sung one, there was no counterpoint or complex harmony The rhythm of Greek music was complex and tied closely to the rhythms of Greek poetry, which it frequently accompanied There exist nearly 50 examples of Greek musical notation; recreations of Greek music based on these examples tend to sound exotic to Western ears, sometimes reminding listeners of Indian or Middle Eastern music Audiences for musical performances ranged from a few guests at a symposium (a drinking party in someone’s home) to 30,000 or so spectators in a theater Most musical genres were also poetic genres Epic poetry was accompanied by the phorminx (a type of kithara), lyric by a lyre or kithara Perhaps the most significant and certainly the most spectacular genre was choral poetry, in which a group of performers sang and danced (the word chorus means “dance”) to the accompaniment of an aulos This was a diverse genre, ranging from the victory odes of the poet Pindar to the choral sections of tragedy (a dramatic form that developed when individual performers were added to engage in dialogue with the chorus) In typical Greek fashion both choral poetry and solo performances of songs with kithara accompaniment became objects of competition at major festivals: Musicians as well as athletes could be Olympic victors Literary sources describe (not always with approval) the virtuosity and innovation of composers and musicians in this highly competitive environment Music was an important part of education, and to be an accomplished lyre player was a valued sign of upper-class status Moreover, music was thought to have important effects on moral character Plato, drawing on the work of earlier theorists, rejected musical modes that supposedly promoted excessive emotion and approved of only those believed to engender courage and moderation (the Dorian and Phrygian) Similarly he condemned the aulos for its overly expressive nature Aristotle’s Politics contains an extended discussion of the effects of music on the souls of citizens For the mathematician-philosopher Pythagoras the harmonies present in music, based on mathematics, were a sign of the harmony of the world as a whole—a mystical line of thought followed by many other ancient Greek philosophers ROME BY AMY HACKNEY BLACKWELL Ancient Romans loved music Music was a part of most social gatherings, from dinner parties to parades Farmers sang folk songs as they worked in the fields, women sang as they went about their daily chores, and admired performers were