Ancient Music and Theology: Opening a dialogue — Oxford, December 6th
The last decades have seen an unprecedented growth in our knowledge of ancient Greek and Roman Mousikē, covering both cultural and technical questions. This vital evidence now allows us to recapture the defining features of ancient scales, rhythms and instruments, and their developments in Classical, Hellenistic and late antique times. It also sheds new light on influential accounts of the ethical, aesthetic and emotional impact of different kinds of music — accounts destined to play a central role not only in Graeco-Roman contexts but also in Hellenistic Jewish thought and Christian religious practices, philosophy and theology.
In 2018–19, the Oxford Network on Ancient Music and Theology has worked to set the foundations for a pioneering collaboration between scholars working in several disciplines–including ancient Greek and Roman Music, Classical Literature and Philosophy, Theology, Biblical Studies, and Musicology.
During this time, we have successfully identified relevant topics and methods that allow us to cast light on evolving areas of current research from an interdisciplinary perspective. We have also designed an event that made accessible to a wider audience the latest research results of our individual disciplines: a lively two-day workshop that took place on December 6th–7th 2019 in the Outreach Room of the Oxford Classics Faculty, ‘Ancient Music and Theology: Opening a dialogue’.
This stimulating event involved five Oxford-based scholars, several leading academics and musicians based in London, Bristol and Cambridge, as well as distinguished international guests based in the US and Germany, who have been attracted by the original approach of our project.
In designing this event, we have also aimed at striking a balance between early career and established scholars, creating a dialogue between different generations as well as scholarly disciplines and traditions.
Our inaugural workshop offered a forum for discussion and shared exploratory work, and fostered an open and multifaceted dialogue that started to overcome artificial disciplinary barriers resulting from the Positivist organisation of modern academic disciplines — divisions that have little in common with the integrated nature of these studies in Classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, and arguably with our experience of music, spirituality, and psychology in the modern world too.
In other words, our Workshop explored the many roles played by music and performative arts in ancient spiritual practices and theoretical reflections by recovering the integrated and intrinsically multimedia character of ancient Mousikē — ‘the art of the Muses’.
This event, which has gained the support of the Arion Society, featured ten papers. Day 1 was opened by Dr Tosca Lynch(Verona/Oxford), who illustrated the latest research results about ancient Greek music, with special focus on harmonics and the cultural implications of these discoveries. Tosca discussed reconstructions of the ancient modes (harmoniai) based upon Classical and Hellenistic evidence, as well as their relationship to different kinds of musical instruments.
This new evidence makes it possible to understand ancient references to ‘Dorian’, ‘Phrygian’ and ‘Lydian’ scales on a practical level as well as on an aesthetic one — a background that, in turn, sheds light on the role that such models had in Classical philosophy (especially Plato) and later theological works (e.g. Clement of Alexandria, discussed in Day 2).
Day 1 continued with a session on ‘Words, prosody and music in ancient Greek and Jewish tradition’. The Greek model was illustrated by Prof. Armand D’Angour (Oxford), who illustrated how the musical features of ancient Greek songs matched the musical nature of Greek prosody: their melodic profiles were based upon the pitch accents of the texts, whereas their rhythmical features derived from the quantitative nature of ancient metre (i.e. their alternations of long and short syllables). Armand also discussed the principles that informed his recent reconstruction of the Orestes Papyrus, which was performed at the Ashmolean Museum in 2017.
The Orestes Papyrus: Papyrus Vienna G 2315 – Euripides, Orestes 338 – 44 = 322 – 8 (WikiCommons)
Dr Danny Crowther (Oxford) subsequently discussed the role of Masoretic cantillation marks (te’amim) in the Hebrew Bible, and the problems raised by recent attempts to reconstruct ancient practice on this basis — with special reference to William Wickes and Suzanne Haїk-Vantoura. Danny examined the theoretical premises that underpin these scholarly approaches, and contrasted them with the great variation of modern and contemporary performance practice: for more details, see Danny’s doctoral thesis.
In the closing session of Day 1, we focused on the evidence offered by a Greek papyrus with notated music, which records the earliest Christian hymn that has survived to this day. This key document is now housed in the Oxford Oxyrhynchus Papyri Collection and was discussed by Prof. Charles Cosgrove (Garrett-Evangelical Seminary, US), a world-leading authority on this musical piece and author of the only existing monograph wholly devoted to it. Charles illustrated the main features of the ‘sound’ of ancient Christian song, starting from the scale and rhythmical modules employed in this piece. He also addressed the significance of the lyrics of this song, which opens with a traditional call for silence and culminates in a choral performance shared with universal ‘powers’ — angels that join in the musical performance of divine hymns of praise.
To round off the first day of our workshop, two musicians — Callum Armstrong and Barnaby Brown — presented archaeologically-informed replicas of different kinds of Graeco-Roman double-pipes (auloi) and flute (plagiaulos). Callum and Barnaby undertake experimental work to explore what new sounds might be produced from archaeological reconstruction of ancient Greek instruments; they also performed for us extracts of ancient scores and some variations upon ancient instrumental exercises written in the treatise Anonyma Bellermanniana.
