Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/171

149 LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 149 priate, where the expression of feeling or passion is inconsistent with a more measured and equable mode of recitation. In the attempt to express these impulses, the alternation of high and low tones would naturally give rise to singing. Hence, with the fine sense of harmony possessed by the Greeks, there was produced a rising and falling in the rhythm, which led to a greater variety and a more skilful arrangement of metrical forms. Moreover, as the expression of strong feeling required more pauses and resting-places, the verses in lyric poetry naturally fell into strophes, of greater or less length ; each of which comprised several varieties of metre, and admitted of an appropriate termination. This arrangement of the strophes was, at the same time, connected with dancing; which was naturally, though not necessa- rily, associated with lyric poetry. The more lively the expression, the more animated will be the gestures of the reciter ; and animated and expiessive movements, which follow the rhythm of a poem, and corre- spond to its metrical structure, are, in fact, dancing. The Greek lyric poetry, therefore, was characterized by the expres- sion of deeper and more impassioned feeling, and a more swelling and impetuous tone, than the elegy or iambus ; and, at the same time, the effect was heightened by appropriate vocal and instrumental music, and often by the movements and figures of the dance. In this union of the sister arts, poetry was indeed predominant; and music and dancing were only employed to enforce and elevate the conceptions of the higher art. Yet music, in its turn, exercised a reciprocal influence on poetry; so that, as it became more cultivated, the choice of the musical measure decided the tone of the whole poem. In order, therefore, that the cha- racter of the Greek lyric poetry may he fully understood, we will prefix an account of the scientific cultivation of music. Consistently with this purpose we should limit our attention to the general character of the music of the ancient Greeks, even if the technical details of the art, notwithstanding many able attempts to explain them, were not still enveloped in great obscurity. § 2. The mythical traditions of Orpheus, Philammon, Chrysothemis, and other minstrels of the early times being set aside, the history of Greek music begins with Terpander the Lesbian. Terpander appears to have been properly the founder of Greek music. He first reduced to rule the different modes of singing which prevailed in different coun- tries, and formed, out of these rude strains, a connected system, from which the Greek music never departed throughout all the improve- ments and refinements of later ages. Though endowed with an inven- tive mind, and the commencer of a new era of music, he attempted no more than to systematize the musical styles which existed in the tunes of Greece and Asia Minor. It is probable that Terpander himself belonged to a family who derived their practice of music from the ancient Pierian bards of Boeotia ; such an inheritance of musical skill is quite