What’s left to us of ancient Greek music has made it an arduous task to imagine, much less reconstruct, its musical contours. Unfortunately, ancient Greek dance is in the same boat. Yet for the Greeks, music and dance and words and actions created and inspired their reality. And just as the prose language of Greek literature underwent changes from Herodotus to Plato, and from Lysias to Demosthenes, so too did Greek music change. The changes it underwent, however, have received bad reviews from ancients and moderns.

In fifth-century Athens almost everyone had something to do, at one time or another, with music. In general, it was taught, conceived of, and performed as a reflection of inner spirit. Therefore, in the education of the young, musical modes that encouraged certain behaviors were taught. The Dorian mode, for example, was considered masculine and dignified[1]; the Phrygian cheerful or pious (even to the point of religious ecstasy)[2]; and the Lydian, though considered ‘slack’, seems to have had a wide range of melody and was thus easy for boys to learn.[3]

We can now only imagine the poetry of Alkman, Stesichoros, Pindar and tragedy performed in these various modes, which in turn communicated traditional Greek sentiments to the audience. There was in this poetry a wedding of vowel quantity to musical rhythm. But some time in the middle part of the fifth century the dithyrambic poet Melanippides, against common practice, began to write dithyrambs without responding strophes, a change that shifted emphasis from the choral group structure of the performance to the musical interludes of the aulete and the sound of his instrument. He also added notes to those of the old familiar scales. Very broadly speaking, Melanippides’ musical innovations, like the philosophical innovations of Sokrates, began to stress the importance of the individual in the group rather than the group itself. And so too in drama we begin to see the diminishing significance of the chorus.

The dithyrambist Kinesias and the citharodes Phrynis and Timotheos are, along with Melanippides, satirized in a fragment from a comedy by Pherekrates, his Chiron of about 410. The fragment notes the changes in mode and the astrophic nature of their compositions. What’s plain to see from this, perhaps the most recognized criticism of the New Music, is the divorce of music from word. In these musicians, expression of meaning was being created through musical innovations and no longer primarily through words themselves. This separation was inevitable despite the inherent music in words. Music can express one thing and words another. Anthony Storr in his recent book, Music and the Mind, writes that “…we can perceive that language and music were originally more closely joined, and that it makes sense to think of music as deriving from a subjective, emotional need for communication with other human beings which is prior to the need for conveying objective information or exchanging ideas.” What the new musicians were exploring was the power of musical metaphor.

When we look toward Aristophanes we see that with respect to musical criticism his comedies emphasize a conservative, traditional relationship to music over any kind of lax or deviant behavior. Criticism of the New Music comes at Clouds 969-72, where Better Argument declares “And if any of them [the children learning music] fooled around with tune or twisted any twirls — the sort of knotted-up twists we get nowadays from Phrynis — he was soundly beaten for obliterating the true Muses.”[4] At Birds 1383-5 Kinesias expresses his interest in having wings in order to fly into the clouds to retrieve anabolai, probably astrophic lyrics similar to Melanippides’. Kinesias’ lyrics are given the dubious distinction of being similar to airy sophistic reasoning. And at Thesmophoriazusai 100 the Relative, in anticipation of Agathon’s entrance song, says, “Is it ant-paths that he’s warbling, or what.”[5] These three passages are the only ones in Aristophanes that refer directly to the New Music. But what is Aristophanes really criticizing? In each case it isn’t exactly the music but the person with whom the music is associated.

Aristophanes’ plays and comedy in general poke fun at Athenians and all Greeks and their obsessions by exaggerating what really goes on. A distorted comic mirror is held up to the audience. This is one of the main characteristics of comedy. But Aristophanes also attempts to educate his audience. Therefore, on the one hand, we can understand that the jokes he makes are not only humorous exaggerations but also comic suggestions for corrective action. On the other hand, we often see in Aristophanes’ comedies the very things he is comically suggesting we avoid. This too is a function of comedy. This kind of paradox is necessary in order to create humor.

However, a conceptual problem arises in Birds where the Hoopoe’s song in the parodos is a striking example of the New Music. It is an astrophic monody that employs a unique combination of metrical units, well-organized, that can give the effect of avian activity. But there is nothing in them that, quoting Nan Dunbar, “closely follows a tragic model with incongruous deviations nor shows stylistic exaggerations indicating parody.”[6]

Therefore, are we to recall Better Argument’s statements in Clouds or anticipate the treatment of Kinesias later in the play and so laugh at the warblings and ant-paths of the Hoopoe’s song? To do so would not fit Aristophanes’ purpose here. Rather Aristophanes is aiming at mimesis, the strongest trait of the New Music. Just as the practitioners of this music were attempting to imitate the sounds and emotions of real life through their musical works, so too does Aristophanes create the sounds and so reality of Nephelokokkygia through the mimetic features of the New Music.

Let me go one step further: Aristophanes realizes the artistic potential of the New Music; therefore, he takes advantage of laughs he can get at the expense of the New Music — mainly because of the real commotion the innovations were causing — yet at the same time he employs aberrations to show his audience that his musical versions are quite acceptable and perhaps most appropriate for his purpose of constructing a comic fantasy that both ridicules and instructs.

There is one more connection between the New Music and Birds and this is the date of its production, 414. At this time with the launching of their navy to Sicily, the Athenians were at the height of both the war effort and the power of their radical democracy. There have been many scholarly arguments about Birds’ relationship to the affairs involving Sicily, but an even stronger correlation exists with the mass or elite rule debate. So, I’d like to leave you today with the consideration that as comedy is the great equalizer and Peisetairos is able to lead his demos of birds in a way that no Kleon or Alcibiades could do, so the mimetic nature of the New Music with its break from tradition, emphasis on imitating the world of the senses and tendency to create individualism was a logical step in the evolution of both Greek performance and history. The paradox that seems to exist between criticism and use is a fundamental characterisitc of comedy that encourages critical reflection through fantasy.

[1] West, AGM, p. 179.

[2] ibidem, 180.

[3] ibidem, 181-2.

[4] Barker, Greek Musical Writings, §132.

[5] ibidem, §138.