Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/185

163 LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 163 § 12. By the efforts of these masters, music appears to have been brought to the degree of excellence at which we find it in Pindar's time ; it was then perfectly adapted to express the general course of any feeling-, to which the poet could give a more definite character and meaning. For however imperfect the management of instrumental music and the harmonious combination of different voices and instru- ments may have been among the ancient Greeks, nevertheless the Greek musicians of this time had solved the great problem of their art, viz., that of giving an appropriate expression to the different shades of feel- ing. It was in Greece the constant endeavour of the great poets, the best thinkers, and even of statesmen who interested themselves in the education of youth, to give a good direction to music ; they all dreaded the increasing prevalence of a luxuriant style of instrumental music, and an unrestricted flight in the boundless realms of harmony. But these efforts could only for a while resist the inclinations and turbulent de- mands of the theatrical audiences* ; and the new style of music was established about the end of the Peloponnesian war. It will be here- after shown how strong an influence it exercised upon the poetry of Greece at that time. At the courts of the Macedonian kings, from Alexander downwards, symphonies were performed by hundreds of in- struments ; and from the statements of the ancients it would seem that instrumental music, particularly as regards wind instruments, was at that time scarcely inferior in force or number to our own. Yet amidst all these grand and brilliant productions, the best judges were forced to confess that the ancient melodies of Olympus, which were arranged for the simplest instruments, possessed a beauty to which the modern art, with all its appliances, could never attain f. We now turn to lyric poetry, which, assisted by the musical improve • ments of Terpander, Olympus, and Thaletas, began in the 40th Olym- piad (620 b. c.) a course, which, in a century and a half, brought it to the highest perfection. M2
 * The hocTQDK^aria of Plato. f Plutarch de Mus. c. 18.