What is the earliest musical work in ancient Greece?

Ancient Greece is the earliest ancient civilization in the West, which began with the city-state system in the 8th century BC and was occupied by Macedonia in the 4th century BC.

Judging from the only historical relics, materials and archaeological excavations at present, we know that ancient Greece was a period of monophonic music, and the melody was usually composed of natural sounds or a mixture of natural sounds and inflection (semitone or below).

Music often appears in the form of a trinity of poetry and music, dance and music, or poetry and dance and music.

Singing is sometimes accompanied, and music is recorded in letters.

Music is mainly accompanied by the following forms:

1, accompanied by rituals of offering sacrifices to gods: For example, during the festivals of the ancient Olympic Games, people held musical celebrations of singing and dancing to express their reverence for Zeus, the god who lives on Mount Olympus.

2. Appears with the singing of poems, such as Homer's epic Odyssey and Iliad.

3. Appears with the performance of tragedies, such as three tragic writers and their tragedies, Prometheus bound by Aeschylus, Oedipus king of Sophocles, and Medea of euripides.

1, meaning: tragedy is an important artistic genre in ancient Greek art.

The word tragedy in Greek means "Song of the Goat", which is related to Dionysus.

Around the 6th century BC, the Greeks began to worship Dionysus, a god symbolizing indulgence, wildness and enjoyment. The origin of tragedy began with the worship of this Dionysian.

In celebration of Dionysus, people will sing Dionysus carols.

According to legend, Dionysus was accompanied by a half-man, half-sheep entourage. Therefore, in the sacrificial activities, people will wear sheepskin, horns and beards, dress up as Dionysus's attendants, and sing and dance.

Later, this ritual activity gradually turned into a tragic performance, actors replaced priests, and narrative stories gradually expanded from praising Dionysus to other mythological themes in ancient Greece.

2. Form: Tragedy is mainly composed of the trinity of poetry, dance and music, in which the music part includes chorus and solo, accompanied by Aphrodite and Kitara.

Tragic performance usually includes four parts: prologue, entrance song, dramatic scene and exit.

3. Representative writers

(1) Aeschylus (about 525~ 465 BC), whose masterpieces include Prometheus Bound and Theia.

(2) Sophocles (about 497~ 406 BC), whose masterpieces are King Oedipus and antigone.

Euripkdes (about 484~ 406 BC), whose masterpieces include Medea and trojan women.

3. Who put forward the theory of harmony? What is its main point of view?

The theory of harmony was put forward by Pythagoras, a great philosopher and mathematician in ancient Greece. He was the first person to explain musical phenomena to people in a theoretical way.

The ancient Greeks respected the universe, so they paid more attention to astronomy. Pythagoras thought that there were similarities between music and the movement of celestial bodies, and put forward the "theory of harmony", which had an important influence on the later western music concepts. The main points are as follows:

The interval relation in the 1. scale is generated based on the chord length. When the chord length ratio is 2: 1, the interval relationship between the two sounds is octave; When the chord length ratio is 4: 3, the relationship between the two sounds is four degrees; When the chord length ratio is 3: 2, the relationship between the two sounds is five degrees.

2. Only the 4th, 5th and 8th degrees are harmonious intervals, and the rest are dissonant intervals.

4. What are the musical thoughts of Plato and Aristotle?

In the eyes of the ancient Greeks, music has an educational function, which can purify the soul and make people do good.

Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher, once pointed out in his works Republic and Law that the function of music is embodied in social education, and it can play a moral role in people, not in enjoyment or entertainment, so we should be wary of the "corrosion" of inappropriate music on people.

Aristotle also said in the eighth chapter of Politics that the moral function and educational function of music are particularly important, and the educational function of music is more important than the pleasure function it produces.

In the eyes of ancient Greek theorists, music has an ethical value orientation, which is fully reflected in their understanding of the role of mode.

They believe that different patterns are associated with different emotions.

For example, Dorian model can make people quiet and powerful; The Phrygia model will make people wild and inspire people's enthusiasm; The deputy Phrygia model is easy to make people lose their will.

However, it should be noted that the evaluation of the mode in this period was not obtained from pure aesthetic experience, but had its specific social, historical and cultural background.

From here, we can see that the problem of music aesthetics (more accurately, the problem of music sociology) can be traced back to ancient Greece, where we can find the earliest answer of western music thought.

1, four tones in ancient Greece:

Doria: Meredos.

Phrygia: Redo Silas.

Lydia): Do what?

Mixolydian): si la sol fa

2. Combine two four-tone sequences with the same nature (same interval structure) to form an octave (except mixed Lydia):

Doria: The Mire-La-Sol family.

Redo Sila Solfamir

Lydia: What are you going to do?

Mixed Lydian: Si La Solfa-Mi Re Do Si

3. Changing the above ratio will produce four variables:

Lower Dolia: wrathall Fami-Redo Sila

Bolivian: Solfamire-do Si La Sol

Hypodian: fami redo-si la sol fa

Hypo-mix-Lydian: My hometown.

There are two points to be explained here: first, the scale form of the ancient Greek four-tone series is different from our current scale meaning. At first, it was only used as a symbol to express the strings of an instrument or the phonemes of a player according to the sound, and then gradually formed the scale form and mode theory in the development.

Second, the structure of "mixed Lydia" and "Doria" is exactly the same.

There are two main types of ancient Greek musical instruments: stringed instruments and wind instruments. The lyre is the representative of stringed instruments, and Aphrodite is the representative of wind instruments.

1, lira: fingers pluck the strings and make a sound. It was originally made of tortoise shell and has four strings. Later, many styles were formed in the development, and the number of strings increased, but seven strings were the main ones, of which kithara was the most important.

They have a soft tone and are singing instruments.

The use of lira is often associated with praising Apollo.

2.aulos: also known as clarinet, its timbre is similar to that of modern oboe. It consists of two pipes, one is long and the other is short, and each pipe has several holes, which can emit two kinds of sounds at the same time.

The voice is penetrating, loud and hard, and has wild and wild power. It is a tool used in carnival and tragedy.