PT Journal
AU Cerny, KM
TI THE PROBLEM OF POLYPHONY IN THE CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY
SO Musicologica Olomucensia
PY 1993
BP 15
EP 29
VL 1
IS 1
AB The Author deals with a very discussed but till now unclear problem. He rejects not only the theory of H. Sanden, but also a concept of development of music "from monophony to polyphony" asserting that both practices developed as parallel trends from a spontaneous chaotic heterophony (Variantenheterophonie by Marius Schneider). But in Greek and Roman Antiquity there no traces of vocal Heterophony or Polyphony were till now found. Notwithstanding the ancient instruments by their construction not only admit, but demand some sorts of using chords or heterophony. The lyres of all kinds played by plektron "over all strings" - this technique is witnessed by many pictorial and also literal sources (f. i. Athenaeus, Deipnosouhistae IV. 139 d) - having more than six strings produced chords of two or more tones sounding in fourth, fifth or octaves, because the left hand of the players had only five fingers to damp the not demanded strings. But those were only isolated chords supporting the most important and invariable (hestotes) tones of the melody and not a consisting polyphony. In the other way the auloi produced two-part texture being double-pipes (double-reeds) blown always together and operated by both hands. The recent analyses by Heinz Becker and Christian Ahrens are cited, from which results that most dominating art of aulos-playing was the "continuous play" with "enclosed reed" (air held in the mouth). This technique produced little fast repeated or free combined (player-) figures, which formed at least with a slower sung melody a free heterophony. An example of such heterophony as the first and till now only document could be seen in one of the newly found inscriptions with musical notation found during the excavations in the agora of Limani Pasa in Laureotike (north Greece) and published 1989 (Musikforschung No 4) by Prof. D. Themelis (Thessaloniki). The marmor-plate-fragment bearing the extant part of the inscription in its right lower corner could be supposedly a part of a greater inscription-tablet originally probably on the wall of the stoa near which it was found. It consist of four lines: two of them with seven signs of the vocal notation each and two both with two symbols interpreted by D. Themelis as a combination (ligature) of three signs, two instrumental and one vocal in the middle, under two first signs of the "vocal melody". Themelis supposes, that these groups had to be repeated also under following tones of the "vocal melody". It could be interpreted in this way because of used vocal signs and it could be supposed, that in the continuation downwards followed the verbal text similarly as in the inscription of the Asklepios-hymnus in the rests of temple at Epidaurus also recently found. For some problematic places occurring Themelis´ interpretation and transcription (hypolydian and dorian with metabole to lydian in 2. line - different signs are interpreted with the same note and other homotona wrongly supposed) a newly interpretation is tried (2nd possibly hyppophrygian and hyperistian in diatonon genos) with following transcription.
ER