Greek art of singing words to the accompanimentrnto some form of lyre or aulosrn(a wind, usually reed instrument).rnGreeks sang at weddings and funerals, atrnathletic games and religious festivals, atrndinners and drinking parties. They composedrnsongs to yorship their gods, tornhonor their heroes, to praise theirrnfriends, and—it goes without saying—tornconfess their loye. Erotic passion wasrnnot, however, their only theme: “O!rnknow, sweet love, I always write of you, /rnAnd you and love are still my argument.”rnAlcaeus (one of the greatest lyric poets)rnwould not have known what to dornwith Shakespeare’s Petrarchan commonplace.rnHe wrote of love, true, but he alsornwrote of war and politics and the pleasuresrnof drinking and plotting revolutionrnwith his friends (subjects much morerncongenial to a man in his prime). Ifrnasked what the subject of poetry was, hernmight have answered “all of life,” an answerrnwhich, in fairness, Shakespearerncould also have given.rnWhat we vaguely call the lyric poemsrnof Sappho and Anacreon, as well as thernchoral lyric poems of Pindar and thernGreek dramatists, were in fact songs. Inrnthis sense, Aeschylus’ Oresteia comesrncloser to being an opera than a play (thernearliest operas were composed as recreationsrnof ancient music-drama), andrnsome (although by no means all) of thernnonsense that has been written aboutrnGreek tragedy comes from the failure torntreat the lyric sections as musical texts. Itrnis easy to forget this fact, because—apartrnfrom a phrase or two of Euripides—thernmusic of Greek lyric poetry is lost, probablyrnirretrievably.rnAlas, the entire corpus of survivingrnGreek musical texts can be printed in arnvery slim volume, including the learnedrncommentaries which almost never succeedrnin explaining anything except to thernhandful of scholars who already havernwritten on the subject. To most classicalrnscholars, including those who write onrnlyric and dramatic poetry, ancient musicrnis a closed book; and, if I may be allowedrna personal comment, after 30 years ofrndesultory efforts to pry the book open, Irncan safely say that my own fingers arernstuck securely into the chapters onrnrhythm.rnThe problem is fairly obvious: Howrndoes one deal with a tradition of technicalrntheory, when there is virtually nornbody of evidence to practice on? Imaginerna disembodied intelligence trying tornunderstand Aristotle’s biological worksrnon a worid without animal or vegetablernlife? Borges has a stor about one of thernArab commentators on Aristotle tryingrnto understand the Poetics. Baffled by thernterms “tragedy” and “comed’,” he concludesrnthey are something like the littlernshows put on to entertain a caravan.rnTo make things worse, the study ofrnGreek music—including the so-calledrn”science of metrics”—has attractedrnsome of the least stable intelligences inrnthe history of scholarship. Occasionally,rnhowever, a major scholar has taken therntime to interpret these mysteries to thernprofane: Boeckh and Wilamowitz onrnrhythm and meter (and, more recently,rnJean Irigoin at the Sorbonne and BrunornGentili and his students at the Universityrnof Urbino), Winnington-Ingram on musicrntheory and notation, Egert Pohlmannrnand Andrew Barker on the ancient texts.rnUseful general works have been produced,rnin recent years, by AnnemariernNeubecker, the late Giovanni Comotti,rnand M.L. West.rnFor the stud- of ancient music, however,rnAmerica has been, for the mostrnpart, a wasteland. The best-knownrnAmerican scholar to tackle Greek musicrnis Warren D. Anderson, whose Ethos andrnEducation in Greek Music examined thernuse of music in ancient education as wellrnas the more theoretical discussions of thernphilosophers. In his latest book, Musicrnand Musicians in Ancient Greece, Andersonrnhas moved awa’ from theory to confrontrn”the was in which hre and kithara,rnaulos and harp and percussion—soundingrnalone or joined with the humanrnvoice—had a place in Greek life.” Beginningrnwith the archeological record of Europeanrnmusic in the Stone Age, Andersonrnquickly goes on to survey therndepictions of musical instruments andrnperformances in the Greek Bronze Agernand in the Dark Age that followed thernTrojan War and the collapse of thernMvcenean citadels. He proceeds to a discussionrnof the literary evidence providedrnby Homer, the archaic lyric poets, andrnthe writers of the fifth century, beforernconcluding with Plato and Aristotle.rnAnderson’s book is not meant to be arnhandbook, but it contains, perhaps, asrnmuch information as e’cn a classicallyrntrained reader can bear. The descriptionsrnof musical instruments is meticulous,rnand his re’iew of archeologicalrnevidence is careful and sometimes illuminating.rnHis treatment of the literaryrnevidence is, on the whole, less satisfacto-rnThroughout his work, Anderson sticksrnto the archeological evidence, whereverrnpossible, in preference to the literary orrntraditional evidence. In many eases thisrnis wise, but as an a priori assumption it isrna mistake to assume that a vase-painter,rnfor example, would have a better grasp ofrnmusical technology than a poet (andrncomposer). His uncertain grasp of Greekrnliterary traditions leads him, time afterrntime, into making unwarranted conjectures.rnOn the basis of the very small partrnof Alcman’s work to survive, he attributesrnto the Spartan poet an “unusualrninterest in the quality of the singingrnvoice” which he uses as the basis for intrudingrnAlan Lomax’s sometimes zanyrncorrelations between the singing stylernand cultural attitudes. (For some reason,rnthe idea of Alan Lomax as a scholarrnstrikes me as hilariously funny. The onerntime I met him he was drunkenly proclaimingrnsolidarity with the oppressedrnpeoples of the worid. “My daddy used torntell me that us Lomaxes were nothmgrnbut white trash,” etc. etc., all for the benefitrnof the black revolutionaries who werernpresent, encouraging him with the usual,rn”That’s right. You tell it, Alan.”) Andersonrnthen concludes that Spartan girlsrnmight have had shrill voices, becausern”wellborn Spartan girls in Alcman’s dayrnunquestionably lived under strict constraints.”rnUnquestionably? I have absolutely nornidea of the kind of constraints underrnwhich Spartan girls lived in the time ofrnAlcman (the seventh century B.C.). Thisrnwas a period before the Spartan regimernhad fully solidified, but even in the fifthrncentury, other Greeks were troubled byrnthe freedom allowed to Spartan women.rnThis is only one of many examples of arnfree-and-easy approach to literary evidence.rnUnfortunately, Anderson is notrnmuch better in dealing with the technicalrnside of Greek rhythm: he even quotes,rnfrom the worst book ever published onrnGreek meter (by Halporn, Ostwald, andrnRosenmeyer), a passage on Pindar inrnwhich the authors (actually, only Rosenmeyer)rnreveal they cannot tell the differencernbetween meter and rhythm, a distinctionrnthat is comparatively trivial inrnspoken verse but of vital importancernwhen one is dealing with music andrnmusic theory.rnAnderson’s inability to handle Greekrnliterature is not idiosyncratic; rather it isrnillustrative of a wider problem. Specialistsrnin material evidence, (e.g., archeologists,rnepigraphers, paleoanthropologists)rn38/CHRONICLESrnrnrn