Music in Greek education – Archives of History.

Music in Greek education found a very prominent place within its cultural world; This caused its development to shape the opinions of philosophers, writers and theoreticians, as well as its harmonies, uses, and even its mythical backing and its magical and mathematical properties were thoroughly studied.

In the history of ancient Greece the following paradox occurs: it is not very common to find a vast number of schools, nor a highly systematized education (at least until the development of the great cities in the Hellenistic age); however, education, called ‘paideia’, is a matter of great importance among the Hellenic poleis. Paideia is a polysemic term, but we can keep in mind that education is usually seen as a long process of physical, civic and intellectual development, which often lasts throughout your life. In the following article we will see the main stages in which this reality develops and, specifically, the relationship it has with music.

Points to consider!

  • Musical learning was characterized by not only being instrumental music, but also singing and dancing. In classical times it is considered that gymnastics and dance is the work to the body what instrumental music and singing are to the soul.
  • There was a great variety of instruments: idiophones, membranophones, aerophones, chordophones.
  • The musical compositions could be differentiated between those made “for the gods”, that is, for sacred environments, even if they were in a civic context (hymns, paeans, dithyrambs, prosodies, parthenios…), and others more related to family and social life , even martial (epitalamios, trenos, encomios, scolios, military and folk music…).
  • Musical learning will have much to do with certain philosophical ideas, and was related to the social status of the student.
  • Music was monodic, and was considered a first-order method of communication. Although we have almost no surviving examples of notated composition, there were such Greek music theorists as Aristoxenus, Nicomachus of Gerasa, and even Plutarch.

Homer and the archaic period, in musical tone

To recognize the origins of musical education, we will have to go back to the stories of Homer. It is not trivial that the famous poet mentions Achilles playing a formige and singing heroic deeds (Il. IX, 185-189), or the very existence of aedos in different courts of the Aegean, such as that of Alcinous (Od. VIII, 60 -90), who sang feats in verse accompanied by a lyre, and where they also practice dance in playful and even funerary contexts.

“They both came to the tents and the ships of the myrmidons

and they found Achilles delighting his spirits with the sonorous forminge,

beautiful, exquisite, which had a silver headstock on top.

with her the heart was recreated and sang deeds of heroes.» (Trans. Emilio Crespo)

Homer’s works were one of the greatest influences on the education of Greece: Plato rightly called him the educator of Greece. Through the performances of his heroes, it was promoted that the ideal of the aristocrats (which was double, technical and ethical) should keep a place for musical education (Marrou, 1985: 25). In addition, here music was already understood as instrumental, dance, singing, solfeggio… The aedos singing deeds, the instruments in the meetings, should not surprise us that they appear in his poems, nor in previous times, Minoan and Mycenaean; the Eastern Mediterranean and Egypt, with whom they had a close relationship, also had a widespread respect for music.

The ethical component was generally seen as something “trainable” through knowledge and discipline, and the capacity of music for this purpose will be seen in the development of its pedagogies; the moral aim of the Homeric heroes, the earring, goes through physical facets such as gymnastics, and spiritual ones, such as poetic and musical ones. Only through the conjunction of both is the final goal of complete and absolute virtue reached (Redondo and Laspalas, 1997: 187).

Advancing chronologically from the Homeric ideals and the semi-legendary characters that dominated much of the Greek educational imaginary, during the Archaic era that discourse was maintained due to the role of music in education. Sparta was one of the hegemonic powers in terms of musical culture, and it was, in fact, the main intellectual expression of their education until the militarization of the classical era; dance linked to exercise and singing to poetry.

In Lacedaemon territory we find the first two musical schools that we witness in Greece, specifically one for vocal or instrumental music and another for choral lyrics. In general, these two were two very important divisions in music in Greece. This period has bequeathed us some more or less well-known names: Taletas of Gortyna, Xenodamos of Citheres, Xenocritus of Locres, Polymnesto of Colophon and Sakadas of Argos, Tirteo or Alcmán. Thanks to toponymy and etymology we can attest that many personalities came from outside Sparta (Marrou, 1985: 36), which once again emphasizes the relevant role of musical training and its corresponding social esteem.

This boom is justified within a context of formation of the poleis, which are relevant to our topic insofar as they position themselves as identity champions, and also artistic: music creates the link between the two. Furthermore, as Redondo and Laspalas (1997: 191-192) say, Hesiod’s ideal that through paidea anyone can reach ethos (a kind of “democratized virtue”), made it easier for the pedagogical tradition to spread at this time, and among them the musical one.

Although not to a high degree of centralization or regulated organization, music was increasingly internalized in civic affairs; religious festivities, processions, sports competitions in the Panhellenic games, all had music. In the sanctuary of Ártemis Ortia, children performed musical contests, there were dances in honor of Artemis and Alcmán tells us about young people dancing in honor of their educators (Marrou, 1985: 37).

“Fill me, muses of Olympus, the soul

with the love of a new song:

I want to hear the voice

of the girls singing

towards heaven a beautiful hymn” (Alc. 3P, trans. Juan Ferraté)

The other best-known polis on the continent, Athens, also left room during the archaic period for musical education. Unlike Sparta, whose upbringing was truncated toward fierce militarism, archaic Athens would have more continuity with its classical period. We have already talked about the erection of cities and musical training, but now we briefly stop at another important characteristic of this type of education: the formation of Athenian schools (not the first, but the most “democratized” so far). In particular, the figure of the music teacher or zither player stands out (Marrou, 1985: 64).

For the Athenians, the idea that education (and music) had to do with morality and citizenship was also valid among many of their thinkers. The songs and poems involved an ethical effort and a moral objective. Like Theognis in his homeland, who said that “the lyre, the dance and the song” was a wise way of life (Marrou, 1985: 65), Solon is the greatest archaic representative of the Athenians in whom, through music , expresses political and social ideals. On the other hand, in this line he expresses the rather conservative character of the musical spirit, or a pedagogical lapse in the life of a student: “change (the line), sweet poet, and sing this way” (elegy 22d, trans. Juan Ferrate).

Classicism: musical ideas

Music teaching was framed in two basic procedures of ancient pedagogy: memory and physical punishment. That is why Aristophanes, in the Clouds, comments that the musical education of a child at the time of Marathon (490 BC) was based on going to the sitarist’s house as children, learning a song by heart (he even gives us titles of them) , the way it was passed on to him by his parents; in the same way, if they did not adhere to the teaching, they were severely punished (964-971).

This is the testimony of how basic education, after 7 years in which children were raised at home, was developed in the teacher’s house, who normally charged and thus maintained the educational system.

On the other hand, although their education in classical times is even more restricted, choral music and civic and religious festivities allowed a very powerful inclusion of women through musical activity, forming part of the city due to their weight in these events; Unlike the ‘hetairas’, these participants were upper class, and appear in iconography in many places in Greece: Sparta, Elis, Argos, Magnesia, Delos (a permanent female choir).

Also the hetairas, as we say, were, without being able to be in “normal” conditions, in aristocratic circles due to their musical knowledge. As in Hellenistic times or in Sappho’s ‘House of the Muses’, there is already a certain musical education for women, despite the fact that the ‘curricular learning’ of good citizenship is made for men. In short, in the words of De Simone: “in ancient world, women contributed to cultural production and dissemination mostly through musical activity. This is partly explained by the importance that ancient civilizations ascribed to music as a means of communication.” (2000: 688)

In addition, music education, which belonged to this educational curriculum (as a concept rather than as a universal institution), continued to be oriented towards the aristocracy, above all due to the economic component of private schools (Marrou, 1985: 140). The same thing happened with mathematics, letters and gymnastics at the primary levels of education (in the direction of the military ephebia), but it did undoubtedly accept the value of music in shaping the citizen, as expressed by the term καλοκαγαθια, and that is expressed very much in accordance with the philosophical principles of Plato (Leg. VII 795-796).

We leave you the wonderful website of the British Museum where you can see many more musical scenes (or at least fragments).

On the other hand, the long treatment that Plato gives to musical education (a preponderant space for music as training of the soul) is inversely proportional to that of Isocrates, who, focused on rhetoric and intellectual and literary studies, abandons the importance of music in the Greek cultural context. Plato considers that participation in a choir determines the character and identity of a citizen, in the collective consideration of both activities (Lee, 2001: 50), and Aristotle similarly reproduces on many occasions the director of a choir with a political leader (Pol. 1288b37-1298a5)

“Once they have learned to play the zither, they teach them the poems of good lyric poets, adapting them to zither music, and force the…