The Monochord in Ancient Greek Harmonic Science

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS The Monochord in Ancient Greek Harmonic Science. David Creese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2010. Pp. 426, 26 b/w illustrations. The past decade has produced several works that focus on the more technical aspects of ancient Greek music, music theory, and harmonics. In 2007 Andrew Barker published The Science of Harmonics in Classical Greece (Cambridge 2007), a more specialized account treating an earlier period than his Scientific Method in Ptolemy’s “Harmonics” (Cambridge 2000). Two years later Flora Levin published her Greek Reflections on the Nature of Music (Cambridge 2009), arguing on behalf of the chief rival of Ptolemaic theory, Aristoxenus. Despite the similarity of subject and publishing with the same press, Levin neglected even to mention Barker’s book. Turn-around is fair play: Creese, who wrote his dissertation under Barker and cites ninety-five different passages in Aristoxenus as well as fifty-one passages from Ptolemaı̈s (apud Porphyry), to whom Levin devoted an entire chapter of her book, fails to include Levin’s book in his bibliography, let alone provide a discussion of her hypotheses. It would seem as if the ancient disagreements between the supporters of Aristoxenus, who insisted on the importance of perception, and his empirical detractors, who insisted on the precision of acoustical science, had resurfaced in the third millennium within the confines of a single publishing house. Nonetheless, Creese has produced a thorough, useful, and at times fascinating volume that traces the history of a single instrument, the monochord. From the outset Creese makes it clear that the monochord is neither a musical instrument nor a scientific instrument. Indeed, musical notes and intervals can themselves be perceived as beautiful sounds but also calculated within the tradition of mathematical harmonics and even visually diagrammed. Creese navigates the extremes and the gray area in between with skill. This is by and large how he introduces the book (1–21), informing the reader of how elusive musical sounds are. The monochord strips many of the variables from musical sounds by regulating, eliminating, or making irrelevant differences caused by timbre, volume, rhythm, accompanying text, and the like. It does not, however, remove the aesthetic pleasure of musical sounds, particularly when such consonant intervals as the octave, fifth, and fourth are calculated mathematically as the epimoric ratios 2:1, 3:2, and 4:3. There is also the problem of the bridge that has been placed on the monochord, for its width consumes part of the length of the very string it is designed to calculate and divide into two precise sections. Creese offers the uninitiated reader an introduction to the fundamentals of both monochord science and ancient Greek musical scales, although, by design, it is not complete. This introduction was possibly included at the publisher’s behest; still, it is doubtful that the casual reader will thus be satisfactorily armed to attack the more than 300 pages of technical arguments that lie ahead. Creese divides his material into four levels, namely, mathematical harmonics, Greek harmonics, Greek mathematics, and Greek science, and it is within his discussions of the larger constructs that the book offers its reader particularly interesting discussions about ancient Greek music theory from fresh and stimulating perspectives. One section in the second chapter (54–59), for instance, contains comparisons to other ancient scientific instruments like the abacus and armillary sphere, evaluating their design, purpose, and value in four ways, whether they work by PHOENIX, VOL. 66 (2012) 1–2. 176 BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 177 generation, representation, analogy, or physical manipulation. Creese concludes this very interesting passage by pointing out that the monochord works in all four modes, and that while the armillary sphere provides a model of celestial phenomena, the monochord actually generates musical intervals. Following the introductory material there are five additional chapters arranged according to the chronology of the development of the monochord from its initial appearance in the fourth century b.c. to Claudius Ptolemy, who flourished during the second century a.d. Our dearth of reliable sources makes this a relatively complicated matter, but Creese leads us through a series of intensely focused investigations aimed at clarifying our knowledge of its initial appearance in Greek literature...