Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/56

 at various places, such as the Olympian in Elis, the Pythian at Delphi, the Nemean in Argolis and the Isthmian at Corinth, at which occurred not only competitions in physical prowess, but equally strenuous rivalries in literary and musical art. These festivals were attended by great throngs, and their stimulus was felt far and wide, attracting contestants from distant lands.

Regarding these two institutions, the Drama and the Games, it is to be noted that the impress of the former again and again affected the unfolding of the mediæval and modern drama, especially the opera, while the latter was frequently paralleled in the age of the Troubadours and Minnesinger (see secs. 38, 40).

19. Actual Effects.—We are thrown back largely upon conjecture as to the actual style of this antique song. Extant literary references are not vivid, and mostly date from long after the most productive periods. Of surely authentic melodies we have only a few mutilated specimens—the chief being the noble Hymn to Apollo discovered at Delphi in 1893, which was a pæan composed by an Athenian to celebrate the repulse of the Goths in 279

It is evident that most melodies were decidedly minor, with a tonality unlike ours and some strange intervals. Doubtless most singing was by male voices in unison, the usual pitch being high and the quality somewhat strident. The rhythmic and metric patterns were certainly varied and often intricate, regulated by the quantities and accents of the text rather than by independent time-schemes as in modern music. Harmony may have been used somewhat in the union of voices, of voices with instruments, and of groups of instruments; but details are lacking.

In the later periods the production of original poetry became steadily more feeble and less associated with music, while the latter lapsed from a dignified fine art to a careless amusement. It passed largely into the hands of slaves and vagrant minstrels, so that it fell to the status of a mere trade. Doubtless some of the refinements of early days were abandoned. Wherever Greek music went outside of Greece, it was inevitably conglomerated with local usages.

It is not clear just how instruments were employed in accompaniment or independently. Doubtless their primary purpose was to support the voice in singing, either by doubling the