Several indications combine to make it probable that singing and speaking were not so widely separated from each other in Greek as in the modern languages with which we are most familiar.

(1) The teaching of the grammarians on the subject of accent points to this conclusion. Our habit of using Latin translations of the terms of Greek grammar has tended to obscure the fact that they belong in almost every case to the ordinary vocabulary of music. The word for 'accent' (tonos) is simply the musical term for 'pitch' or 'key.' The words 'acute' (oxys) and 'grave' (barys) mean nothing more than 'high' and 'low' in pitch. A syllable may have two accents, just as in music a syllable may be sung with more than one note. Similarly the 'quantity' of each syllable answers to the time of a musical note, and the rule that a long syllable is equal to two short ones is no doubt approximately correct. Consequently every Greek word (enclitics being reckoned as parts of a word) is a sort of musical phrase, and every sentence is a more or less definite melody—logÔdes ti melos, as it is called by Aristoxenus (p. 18 Meib.). Moreover the accent in the modern sense, the ictus or stress of the voice, appears to be quite independent of the pitch or 'tonic' accent: for in Greek poetry the ictus (arsis) is determined by the metre, with which the tonic accent evidently has nothing to do. In singing, accordingly, the tonic accents disappear; for the melody takes their place, and gives each syllable a new pitch, on which (as we shall presently see) the spoken pitch has no influence. The rise and fall of the voice in ordinary speaking is perceptible enough in English, though it is more marked in other European languages. Helmholtz tells us—with tacit reference to the speech of North Germany—that an affirmative sentence generally ends with a drop in the tone of about a Fourth, while an interrogative is marked by a rise which is often as much as a Fifth [52]. In Italian the interrogative form is regularly given, not by a particle or a change in the order of the words, but by a rise of pitch. The Gregorian church music, according to a series of rules quoted by Helmholtz (l. c.), marked a comma by a rise of a Tone, a colon by a fall of a Semitone; a full stop by a Tone above, followed by a Fourth below, the 'reciting note'; and an interrogation by a phrase of the form d b c d (c being the reciting note).

These examples, however, do little towards enabling modern scholars to form a notion of the Greek system of accentuation. In these and similar cases it is the sentence as a whole which is modified by the tonic accent, whereas in Greek it is the individual word. It is true that the accent of a word may be affected by its place in the sentence: as is seen in the loss of the accent of oxytone words when not followed by a pause, in the anastrophe of prepositions, and in the treatment of the different classes of enclitics. But in all these instances it is the intonation of the word as such, not of the sentence, which is primarily concerned. What they really prove is that the musical accent is not so invariable as the stress accent in English or German, but may depend upon the collocation of the word, or upon the degree of emphasis which it has in a particular use.

(2) The same conclusion may be drawn from the terms in which the ancient writers on music endeavour to distinguish musical and ordinary utterance.

Aristoxenus begins his Harmonics by observing that there are two movements of the voice, not properly discriminated by any previous writer; namely, the continuous, which is the movement characteristic of speaking, and the discrete or that which proceeds by intervals, the movement of singing. In the latter the voice remains for a certain time on one note, and then passes by a definite interval to another. In the former it is continually gliding by imperceptible degrees from higher to lower or the reverse [53]. In this kind of movement the rise and fall of the voice is marked by the accents (prosÔdiai), which accordingly form the melody, as it may be called, of spoken utterance [54]. Later writers state the distinction in much the same language. Nicomachus tells us that the two movements were first discriminated by the Pythagoreans. He dwells especially on the ease with which we pass from one to the other. If the notes and intervals of the speaking voice are allowed to be separate and distinct, the form of utterance becomes singing [55]. Similarly Aristoxenus says that we do not rest upon a note, unless we are led to do so by the influence of feeling (an mÊ dia pathos pote eis toiautÊn kinÊsin anankasthÔmen elthein).

According to the rhetorician Dionysius of Halicarnassus the interval used in the melody of spoken utterance is approximately a Fifth, or three tones and a half (dialektou men oun melos heni metreitai diastÊmati tÔ legomenÔ dia pente, hÔs engista; kai oute epiteinetai pera tÔn triÔn tonÔn kai hÊmitoniou epi to oxy oute anietai tou chÔriou toutou pleion epi to bary [56]). He gives an interesting example (quoted above on p. 91) from the Orestes of Euripides, to show that when words are set to music no account is taken of the accents, or spoken melody. Not merely are the intervals varied (instead of being nearly uniform), but the rise and fall of the notes does not answer to the rise and fall of the syllables in ordinary speech. This statement is rendered the more interesting from the circumstance that the inscription discovered by Mr. Ramsay (supra, p. 89), which is about a century later, does exhibit precisely this correspondence. Apparently, then, the melody of the inscription represents a new idea in music,—an attempt to bring it into a more direct connexion with the tones of the speaking voice. The fact of such an attempt being made seems to indicate that the divergence between the two kinds of utterance was becoming more marked than had formerly been the case. It may be compared with the invention of recitative in the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Aristides Quintilianus (p. 7 Meib.) recognises a third or intermediate movement of the voice, viz. that which is employed in the recitation of poetry. It is probable that Aristides is one of the latest writers on the subject, and we may conjecture that in his time the Greek language had in great measure lost the original tonic accents, and with them the quasi-melodious character which they gave to prose utterance.

In the view which these notices suggest the difference between speaking and singing is reduced to one of degree. It is analysed in language such as we might use to express the difference between a monotonous and a varied manner of speaking, or between the sounds of an Aeolian harp and those of a musical instrument.

(3) What has been said of melody in the two spheres of speech and song applies also mutatis mutandis to rhythm. In English the time or quantity of syllables is as little attended to as the pitch. But in Greek the distinction of long and short furnished a prose rhythm which was a serious element in their rhetoric. In the rhythm of music, according to Dionysius, the quantity of syllables could be neglected, just as the accent was neglected in the melody [57]. This, however, does not mean that the natural time of the syllables could be treated with the freedom which we see in a modern composition. The regularity of lyric metres is sufficient to prove that the increase or diminution of natural quantity referred to by Dionysius was kept within narrow limits, the nature of which is to be gathered from the remains of the ancient system of Rhythmic. From these sources we learn with something like certainty that the rhythm of ordinary speech, as determined by the succession of long or short syllables, was the basis not only of metres intended for recitation, such as the hexameter and the iambic trimeter, but also of lyrical rhythm of every kind.

(4) As to the use of the stress accent in Greek prose we are without direct information. In verse it appears as the metrical ictus or arsis of each foot, which answers to what English musicians call the 'strong beat' or accented part of the bar [58]. In the Homeric hexameter the ictus is confined to long syllables, and appears to have some power of lengthening a short or doubtful syllable. In the Attic poetry which was written in direct imitation of colloquial speech, viz. the tragic and comic trimeter, there is no necessary connexion between the ictus and syllabic length: but on the other hand a naturally long syllable which is without the ictus may be rhythmically short. In lyrical versification the ictus does not seem to have any connexion with quantity: and on the whole we may gather that it was not until the Byzantine period of Greek that it came to be recognised as a distinct factor in pronunciation. The chief elements of utterance—pitch, time and stress—were independent in ancient Greek speech, just as they are in music. And the fact that they were independent goes a long way to prove our main contention, viz. that ancient Greek speech had a peculiar quasi-musical character, consequently that the difficulty which modern scholars feel in understanding the ancient statements on such matters as accent and quantity is simply the difficulty of conceiving a form of utterance of which no examples can now be observed.

The conception which we have thus been led to form of ancient Greek as it was spoken is not without bearing on the main subject of these pages. For if the language even in its colloquial form had qualities of rhythm and intonation which gave it this peculiar half musical character, so that singing and speaking were more closely akin than they ever are in our experience, we may expect to find that music was influenced in some measure by this state of things. What is there, then, in the special characteristics of Greek music which can be connected with the exceptional relation in which it stood to language?

Greek music was primarily and chiefly vocal. Instrumental music was looked upon as essentially subordinate,—an accompaniment or at best an imitation of singing. For in the view of the Greeks the words (lexis) were an integral part of the whole composition. They contained the ideas, while the music with its variations of time (rhythmos) and pitch (harmonia) furnished a natural vehicle for the appropriate feelings. Purely instrumental music could not do this, because it could not convey the ideas or impressions fitted to be the object of feeling. Hence we find Plato complaining on this ground of the separation of poetry and music which was beginning to be allowed in his time. The poets, he says, rend asunder the elements of music; they separate rhythm and dance movements from melody, putting unmusical language into metre, and again make melody and rhythm without words, employing the lyre and the flute without the voice: so that it is most difficult, when rhythm and melody is produced without language, to know what it means, or what subject worthy of the name it represents (kai hotÔ eoike tÔn axiologÔn mimÊmatÔn). It is utterly false taste, in Plato's opinion, to use the flute or the lyre otherwise than as an accompaniment to dance and song [59]. Similarly in the Aristotelian Problems (xix. 10) it is asked why, although the human voice is the most pleasing, singing without words, as in humming or whistling, is not more agreeable than the flute or the lyre. Shall we say, the writer answers, 'that the human voice too is comparatively without charm if it does not represent something? (Ê oud' ekei, ean mÊ mimÊtai, homoiÔs hÊdy?) That is to say, music is expressive of feeling, which may range from acute passion to calm and lofty sentiment, but feeling must have an object, and this can only be adequately given by language. Thus language is, in the first instance at least, the matter to which musical treatment gives artistic form. In modern times the tendency is to regard instrumental music as the highest form of the art, because in instrumental music the artist creates his work, not by taking ideas and feelings as he finds them already expressed in language, but directly, by forming an independent vehicle of feeling,—a new language, as it were, of passion and sentiment,—out of the absolute relations of movement and sound.

The intimate connexion in Greek music between words and melody may be shown in various particulars. The modern practice of basing a musical composition—a long and elaborate chorus, for example—upon a few words, which are repeated again and again as the music is developed, would have been impossible in Greece.

It becomes natural when the words are not an integral part of the work, but only serve to announce the idea on which it is based, and which the music brings out under successive aspects. The same may be said of the use of a melody with many different sets of words. Greek writers regard even the repetition of the melody in a strophe and antistrophe as a concession to the comparative weakness of a chorus. With the Greeks, moreover, the union in one artist of the functions of poet and musician must have tended to a more exquisite adaptation of language and music than can be expected when the work of art is the product of divided labour. In Greece the principle of the interdependence of language, metre, and musical sound was carried very far. The different recognised styles had each certain metrical forms and certain musical scales or keys appropriated to them, in some cases also a certain dialect and vocabulary. These various elements were usually summed up in an ethnical type, one of those which played so large a part in their political history. Such a term as Dorian was not applied to a particular scale at random, but because that scale was distinctive of Dorian music: and Dorian music, again, was one aspect of Dorian temper and institutions, Dorian literature and thought.

Whether the Greeks were acquainted with harmony—in the modern sense of the word—is a question that has been much discussed, and may now be regarded as settled [60]. It is clear that the Greeks were acquainted with the phenomena on which harmony depends, viz. the effect produced by sounding certain notes together. It appears also that they made some use of harmony,—and of dissonant as well as consonant intervals,—in instrumental accompaniment (krousis).

On the other hand it was unknown in their vocal music, except in the form of bass and treble voices singing the same melody. In the instrumental accompaniment it was only an occasional ornament, not a necessary or regular part of the music. Plato speaks of it in the Laws as something which those who learn music as a branch of liberal education should not attempt [61]. The silence of the technical writers, both as to the use of harmony and as to the tonality of the Greek scale, points in the same direction. Evidently there was no system of harmony,—no notion of the effect of successive harmonies, or of two distinct parts or progressions of notes harmonising with each other.

The want of harmony is to be connected not only with the defective tonality which was probably characteristic of Greek music,—we have seen (p. 42) that there is some evidence of tonality,—but still more with the non-harmonic quality of many of the intervals of which their scales were composed. We have repeatedly dwelt upon the variety and strangeness (to our apprehension) of these intervals. Modern writers are usually disposed to underrate their importance, or even to explain them away. The Enharmonic, they point out, was produced by the interpolation of a note which may have been only a passing note or appoggiatura. The Chromatic also, it is said, was regarded as too difficult for ordinary performers, and most of its varieties went out of use at a comparatively early period. Yet the accounts which we find in writers so remote in time and so opposed in their theoretical views as Aristoxenus and Ptolemy, bear the strongest testimony to the reality and persistence of these non-diatonic scales.

And we have the decisive fact that of the six scales of the cithara given by Ptolemy (see p. 85) not one is diatonic in the modern sense of the word. It may be alleged on the other side that the ideal scale in the Timaeus of Plato is purely diatonic, and exhibits the strictest Pythagorean division. But that scale is primarily a framework of mathematical ratios, and could not take notice of intervals which had not yet been identified with ratios. It is not certain when the discovery of Pythagoras was extended to the non-diatonic scales. Even in the Sectio Canonis of Euclid there is no trace of knowledge that any intervals except those of the Pythagorean diatonic scale had a numerical or (as we should say) physical basis [62]. In Plato's time, as we can see from a well-known passage of the Republic (quoted on p. 53), the Enharmonic and Chromatic scales were the object of much zealous study and experiment on the part of musicians of different schools,—some seeking to measure and compare the intervals directly by the ear, others to find numbers in the consonances which they heard, and both, from the Platonic point of view, 'setting ears above intelligence,' and therefore labouring in vain [63].

The multiplicity of intervals, then, which surprises us in the doctrine of the genera and 'colours' was not an accident or excrescence. And although some of the finer varieties, such as the Enharmonic, belong only to the early or classical period, there is enough to show that it continued to be characteristic of the Greek musical system, at least until the revival of Hellenism in the age of the Antonines. The grounds of this peculiarity may be sought partly in the Greek temperament. We can hardly deny the Greeks the credit of a fineness of sensibility upon which civilisation, to say the least, has made no advance. We may note further how entirely it is in accordance with the analogies of Greek art to find a series of artistic types created by subtle variations within certain well-defined limits. For the present purpose, however, it will be enough to consider how the phenomenon is connected with other known characteristics of Greek music,—its limited compass and probably imperfect tonality, the thin and passionless quality of its chief instrument, on the other hand the keen sense of differences of pitch, the finely constructed rhythm, and finally the natural adaptation, on which we have already dwelt, between the musical form and the language.

The last is perhaps the feature of greatest significance, especially in a comparison of the ancient and modern types of the art. The beauty and even the persuasive effect of a voice depend, as we are more or less aware, in the first place upon the pitch or key in which it is set, and in the second place upon subtle variations of pitch, which give emphasis, or light and shade. Answering to the first of these elements ancient music, if the main contention of this essay is right, has its system of Modes or keys. Answering to the second it has a series of scales in which the delicacy and variety of the intervals still fill us with wonder. In both these points modern music shows diminished resources. We have in the Keys the same or even a greater command of degrees of pitch: but we seem to have lost the close relation which once obtained between a note as the result of physical facts and the same note as an index of temper or emotion. A change of key affects us, generally speaking, like a change of colour or of movement—not as the heightening or soothing of a state of feeling. In respect of the second element of vocal expression, the rise and fall of the pitch, Greek music possessed in the multiplicity of its scales a range of expression to which there is no modern parallel. The nearest analogue may be found in the use of modulation from a Major to a Minor key, or the reverse. But the changes of genus and 'colour' at the disposal of an ancient musician must have been acoustically more striking, and must have come nearer to reproducing, in an idealised form, the tones and inflexions of the speaking voice. The tendency of music that is based upon harmony is to treat the voice as one of a number of instruments, and accordingly to curtail the use of it as the great source of dramatic and emotional effect. The consequence is twofold. On the one hand we lose sight of the direct influence exerted by sound of certain degrees of pitch on the human sensibility, and thus ultimately on character. On the other hand the music becomes an independent creation. It may still be a vehicle of the deepest feeling: but it no longer seeks the aid of language, or reaches its aim through the channels by which language influences the mind of man.