# So then, we haven't a clue about ancient Roman or Greek music, do we? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 8, 2006, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-then-we-havent-a-clue-about-ancient-roman-or-greek-music-do-we/367909 "2006-08-08T20:07:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-then-we-havent-a-clue-about-ancient-roman-or-greek-music-do-we/367909/1 "2006-08-08T20:07:58Z")
If you here the term ‘classical music’, which most people use loosely to refer to the entire range of Western composed music from the Renaissance onwards, you probably form a fairly clear sonic image in your mind. You imagine a Beethoven symphony, or maybe something more contemporary. Or you may think of a Baroque guitar suite. Whichever it is, all this music seems to share certain characteristics with regard to tonal structure and the format of the pieces, not counting some of the more exploratory composers of the modern era. But what was the music of antiquity like? AFAIK the oldest music we have written down is Gregorian chants, but since they were liturgical in nature I wouldn’t expect them to have much to do with other music of the time. In Italy, was the music of ancient times anything at all like that of the Renaissance? Or the Baroque? Did anyone invent fugues and suites for the lyre, and present concerts? Did the early Christian church suppress all non-liturgical music? It’s little short of astonishing to me that the music of an entire era has been so extirpated. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-then-we-havent-a-clue-about-ancient-roman-or-greek-music-do-we/367909/2 "2006-08-08T20:42:14Z")
[Oldest music](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=308846) [Music in ancient times](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=281873) [Ancient Music. What did it sound like?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=157755) [Ancient Greek Music](http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/agm/) (samples of ancient greek music) ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-then-we-havent-a-clue-about-ancient-roman-or-greek-music-do-we/367909/3 "2006-08-08T20:43:29Z")
Actually, we have a very good idea of what the music of ancient greece was like. Several universities and museums have fragments of parchment with musical notation from the greeks of that era. ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-then-we-havent-a-clue-about-ancient-roman-or-greek-music-do-we/367909/4 "2006-08-08T20:46:26Z")
I don’t know about the Romans, but I have here a book titled _Daily life in Greece at the time of Pericles_, which says something about their music. Some points: –There was no musical notation. All music was learned by rote, and it was not written down. –Greek music was monodic; polyphony was unknown. Thus it was fairly simple music to learn. Even choirs of singers all sang the same notes, though sometimes differing by an octave according to voice. –The two major instruments were the lyre and the ‘flute’ (a flute was a pipe of reeds, often double-piped). The lyre was the more esteemed. –Music was very highly valued and young children (citizen ones, that is) mostly received musical training. Passing a lyre around and requiring a verse or two from everyone was a popular entertainment at dinners. Spartans marched to flutes playing war-songs. * * * We still have some hymns and such which would have been sung. But without any musical notation, we do not know what melodies they would have been sung to. Hope that helps you a bit. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-then-we-havent-a-clue-about-ancient-roman-or-greek-music-do-we/367909/5 "2006-08-08T20:46:39Z")
> [@Antinor01](#): > > Actually, we have a very good idea of what the music of ancient greece was like. Several universities and museums have fragments of parchment with musical notation from the greeks of that era. Do we have any idea as to what the notation means? ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-then-we-havent-a-clue-about-ancient-roman-or-greek-music-do-we/367909/6 "2006-08-08T20:47:43Z")
All right, well, it appears that someone was writing music down. Was that perhaps from after the Periclean era? Or is my book just wrong? ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-then-we-havent-a-clue-about-ancient-roman-or-greek-music-do-we/367909/7 "2006-08-08T21:21:17Z")
[http://classics.uc.edu/music/index.html](http://classics.uc.edu/music/index.html) That one shows a few of the fragments along with recordings. As to how well we can interpret what the notations meant, that seems to be seriously debatable but we do know that the music theories of Pythagoras were used well into medieval times. I don’t have other references handy right now, but I’ll take a look later. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-then-we-havent-a-clue-about-ancient-roman-or-greek-music-do-we/367909/8 "2006-08-08T23:22:58Z")
> [@dangermom](#): > > Greek music was monodic; polyphony was unknown. Boy, that must have been boring. When was polyphony invented (or introduced into Western music)? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-then-we-havent-a-clue-about-ancient-roman-or-greek-music-do-we/367909/9 "2006-08-08T23:39:55Z")
[What did ancient Greek music sound like?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=367335) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2006, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-then-we-havent-a-clue-about-ancient-roman-or-greek-music-do-we/367909/10 "2006-08-09T00:12:46Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > Boy, that must have been boring. When was polyphony invented (or introduced into Western music)? [The Thirteenth Century.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphony#Historical_Context) And even then it was controversial (scroll down). And I can’t think of any earlier or non-Western musical tradition that ever invented polyphony. Or harmony, for that matter. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-then-we-havent-a-clue-about-ancient-roman-or-greek-music-do-we/367909/11 "2006-08-21T14:34:18Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [The Thirteenth Century.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphony#Historical_Context) And even then it was controversial (scroll down). And I can’t think of any earlier or non-Western musical tradition that ever invented polyphony. Or harmony, for that matter. Why is that, I wonder? Are polyphony and harmony really such challenging concepts? Why did only one civilization independently invent them? ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-then-we-havent-a-clue-about-ancient-roman-or-greek-music-do-we/367909/12 "2006-08-21T14:50:22Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [The Thirteenth Century.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphony#Historical_Context) And even then it was controversial (scroll down). And I can’t think of any earlier or non-Western musical tradition that ever invented polyphony. Or harmony, for that matter. The sound samples here [Ancient Greek Music](http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/agm/) seem to imply that the Ancient Greeks had a notion of harmony. It wasn’t just two voices locked into fifths with each other, either. Does two voices count as polyphony? Of course, it’s not clear at that site exactly which sound samples are taken from ancient music and which are simply contemporary improvisations on an ancient instrument. But apparently the instrument (the aulos) is designed with the specific purpose of being able to harmonize with itself. -FrL-