Music of ancient Rome

"Roman music" redirects here. For music associated with the modern city of Rome, see Music of Rome.

Trio of musicians playing an aulos, cymbala, and tympanum (mosaic from Pompeii)

thats crazy

The music of ancient Rome was a part of Roman culture from earliest times.^[1] Music was customary at funerals, and the tibia (Greek aulos), a woodwind instrument, was played at sacrifices to ward off ill influences.^[2] Song (carmen) was an integral part of almost every social occasion.^[3] The Secular Ode of Horace, for instance, was commissioned by Augustus and performed by a mixed children's choir at the Secular Games in 17 BC. Under the influence of ancient Greek theory, music was thought to reflect the orderliness of the cosmos, and was associated particularly with mathematics and knowledge.^[4]

Etruscan music had an early influence on that of the Romans. During the Imperial period, Romans carried their music to the provinces, while traditions of Asia Minor, North Africa and Gaul became a part of Roman culture.^[5]

Music accompanied spectacles and events in the arena, and was part of the performing arts form called pantomimus, an early form of story ballet that combined expressive dancing, instrumental music and a sung libretto.^[6]

Musical notation

Musicians in a detail from the Zliten mosaic (2nd century AD), originally shown as accompanying gladiator combat and wild-animal events in the arena: from left, the tuba, hydraulis (water pipe organ), and two cornua

The Romans may have borrowed the Greek method^[7] of 'enchiriadic notation' to record their music, if they used any notation at all. Four letters (in English notation 'A', 'G', 'F' and 'C') indicated a series of four succeeding tones. Rhythm signs, written above the letters, indicated the duration of each note.

No musician is depicted in art reading music, and no written examples of Roman music have yet been discovered. The Romans may have tuned their instruments to Greek modes.^[8]

Instruments

Roman art depicts various woodwinds, "brass", percussion and stringed instruments.^[9] Roman-style instruments are found in parts of the Empire where they did not originate, and indicate that music was among the aspects of Roman culture that spread throughout the provinces.

Tuba player (upper right) in a relief depicting Marcus Aurelius in triumph

Wind instruments

• The Roman tuba was a long, straight bronze trumpet with a detachable, conical mouthpiece like that of the modern French horn. Extant examples are about 1.3 metres long, and have a cylindrical bore from the mouthpiece to the point where the bell flares abruptly,^[10] similar to the modern straight trumpet seen in presentations of 'period music'. Since there were no valves, the tuba was capable only of a single overtone series that would probably sound familiar to the modern ear, given the limitations of musical acoustics for instruments of this construction.^[11] In the military, it was used for "bugle calls". The tuba is also depicted in art such as mosaics accompanying games (ludi) and spectacle events.
• The cornu (Latin "horn") was a long tubular metal wind instrument that curved around the musician's body, shaped rather like an uppercase G. It had a conical bore (again like a French horn) and a conical mouthpiece. It may be hard to distinguish from the buccina. The cornu was used for military signals and on parade.^[12] The cornicen was a military signal officer who translated orders into calls. Like the tuba, the cornu also appears as accompaniment for public events and spectacle entertainments.
• The tibia (Greek aulos), usually double, had two double-reed (as in a modern oboe) pipes, not joined but generally played with a mouth-band to hold both pipes steadily between the player's lips.^[13] Modern changes indicate that they produced a low, clarinet-like sound. There is some confusion about the exact nature of the instrument; alternate descriptions indicate each pipe having a single reed (like a modern clarinet) instead of a double reed.
• The askaules — a bagpipe.
• Versions of the modern flute and panpipes.

• 
  Cornu at the Limesmuseum in Aalen, Germany
• 
  Cornicines on Trajan's Column (2nd century)
• 
  Horn player on the Ludovisi sarcophagus (3rd century)
• 
  Tibia player accompanying a sacrifice led by Marcus Aurelius
• 
  Panpipes played by Pan and aulos by a maenad (Mildenhall Treasure, 4th century)

String instruments

Woman playing a cithara

• The lyre, borrowed from the Greeks, was essentially an early harp, with a frame of wood or tortoise shell and various numbers of strings stretched from a cross bar to the sounding body. The lyre was held or cradled in one arm and hand and plucked with the other hand. The Romans gradually abandoned this instrument in favour of the more sophisticated cithara, a larger instrument with a box-type frame with strings stretched from the cross-bar at the top to the sounding box at the bottom; it was held upright and played with a plectrum. The strings were tunable by adjusting wooden wedges along the cross-bar.^[14]
• The lute, the true forerunner of the guitar (cithara), is considered a medieval instrument but was played by the ancient Romans. The Roman lute had three strings and was not as popular as the lyre or the cithara, but was easier to play.
• The cithara was the premier musical instrument of ancient Rome and was played both in popular music and in serious forms of music. Larger and heavier than a lyre, the cithara was a loud, sweet and piercing instrument with precision tuning ability. It was said some players could make it cry. From cithara comes our word guitar and though the guitar more directly evolved from the lute, the same mystique surrounds the guitar idols of today as it did for the virtuoso cithara players, the citharista, and popular singers of ancient Rome. Like other instruments, it came originally from Greece and Greek images portray the most elaborately constructed citharas.

It was considered that the gods of music, the Muses and Apollo, gave cithara players their gift to mesmerise listeners.

Organs

Hydraulis and cornu on a mosaic from Nennig, Germany

Mosaics depict instruments that look like a cross between the bagpipe and the organ. The pipes were sized so as to produce many of the modes (scales) known from the Greeks. It is unclear whether they were blown by the lungs or by some mechanical bellows.

The hydraulic pipe organ (hydraulis), which worked by water pressure, was "one of the most significant technical and musical achievements of antiquity".^[15] Essentially, the air to the pipes that produce the sound comes from a mechanism of a wind-chest connected by a pipe to a dome; air is pumped in to compress water, and the water rises in the dome, compressing the air and causing a steady supply to reach the pipes^[16] (also see Pipe organ#History). The instrument goes back to the ancient Greeks and a well-preserved model in pottery was found at Carthage in 1885.^[17]

The hydraulis accompanied gladiator contests and events in the arena, as well as stage performances. It might also be found in homes, and was among the instruments that the emperor Nero played.^[18]

Percussion

• Variations of a hinged wooden or metal device (called a scabellum) — a 'clapper' — used to beat time. Also, there were various rattles, bells and tambourines.
• Drum and percussion instruments like timpani and castanets, the Egyptian sistrum, and brazen pans, served various musical and other purposes in ancient Rome, including backgrounds for rhythmic dance, celebratory rites like those of the Bacchantes, military uses, hunting (to drive out prey) and even for the control of bees in apiaries. Some Roman music was distinguished for its having a steady beat, no doubt through the use of drums and the percussive effects of clapping and stamping. Egyptian musicians often kept time by snapping the fingers.
• The sistrum was a rattle consisting of rings strung across the cross-bars of a metal frame, which was often used for ritual purposes.
• Cymbala (Lat. plural of cymbalum, from the Greek kymbalon) were small cymbals: metal discs with concave centres and turned rims, used in pairs which were clashed together.^[19]

Masked theatrical troupe around an aulos player (mosaic from the House of the Tragic Poet, Pompeii)

Music in society

In spite of the purported lack of musical originality on the part of the Romans, they did enjoy music greatly and used it for many activities. Scott recounts the obvious military uses of the tuba for signaling, as well as music for funerals, private gatherings, public performances on the stage and large gladiatorial spectacles. Music was also used in religious ceremonies. The Romans cultivated music as a sign of education.^[20] Music contests were quite common and attracted a wide range of competition, including Nero himself, who performed widely as an amateur and once traveled to Greece to compete.^[21]

There are also numerous references (cited in Scott) to the pervasive presence of music in ancient Rome, music even on a very large scale — hundreds of trumpeters and pipers playing together at massive games and festivals — and even of normally hand-held citharas built as large as carriages.

Discography

• Synaulia, Music of Ancient Rome, Vol. I – Wind Instruments - Amiata Records ARNR 1396, Florence, 1996.
• Synaulia, Music of Ancient Rome, Vol. II – String Instruments - Amiata Records, ARNR 0302, Rome, 2002.
• Thaleia, Carmina Canere Music of Ancient Rome, Vol. I –Tarragona - Spain 2012.

Notes

1st-century Roman wall painting of a harpist

1. ^ Naerebout, p. 146.
2. ^ Ginsberg-Klar, pp. 313, 316.
3. ^ Habinek, passim.
4. ^ Habinek, pp. 90ff.
5. ^ Scott, p. 404.
6. ^ Frankin, p. 95; Starks, pp. 14ff.
7. ^ Ulrich and Pisk, .
8. ^ Pierce, p. 45.
9. ^ Ginsberg-Klar, p. 313.
10. ^ Ulrich and Pisk, p. 25.
11. ^ Bonanni, plate 2.
12. ^ Ginsberg-Klar, p. 314.
13. ^ Bonanni, plate 3.
14. ^ Bonanni, plate 48.
15. ^ Ginsberg-Klar, p. 316.
16. ^ Williams, .
17. ^ Cook.
18. ^ Scott, p. 413.
19. ^ Walter, p. 23.
20. ^ Suetonius, cited in Scott, p. 418.
21. ^ Marcuse, pp. 137, 304.
22. ^ Scott, .

References

• Bonanni, Filippo. 1964. Antique Musical Instruments and their Players, Dover Publications reprint of the 1723 work, Gabinetto armonico',' with supplementary explanatory material. New York: Dover Publications.
• Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. De institutione musica. (English edition as Fundamentals of Music, translated, with introduction and notes by Calvin M. Bower; edited by Claude V. Palisca. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.)
• Cook, James H. 1999. "Organ History: Origin and Development through 800 AD". James H. Cook's Faculty Personal Website, at Birmingham-Southern College (Accessed 19 December 2012).
• Franklin, James L., Jr. 1987. "Pantomimists at Pompeii: Actius Anicetus and His Troupe". American Journal of Philology 108, no. 1
• Ginsberg-Klar, Maria E. 1981. "The Archaeology of Musical Instruments in Germany during the Roman Period". World Archaeology 12, no. 3:
• Habinek, Thomas. 2005. The World of Roman Song. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Marcuse, Sibyl. 1975. Musical Instruments: A Comprehensive Dictionary, corrected edition. The Norton Library. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. ISBN 0-393-00758-8.
• Naerebout, Frederick G. 2009. "Dance in the Roman Empire and Its Discontents". In Ritual Dynamics and Religious Change in the Roman Empire. Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire (Heidelberg, July 5–7, 2007): Brill.
• Pierce, John R. 1983. The Science of Musical Sound, New York: Scientific American Books.
• Scott, J. E. 1957. 'Roman Music' in The New Oxford History of Music, vol.1: 'Ancient and Oriental Music,' Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Smith, William. 1874. A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. New York: Harper.
• Starks, John H., Jr., 2008. "Pantomime Actresses in Latin Inscriptions". In New Directions in Ancient Pantomime Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
• Suetonius. Nero, xli, liv.
• Ulrich, Homer, and Paul Pisk. 1963. A History of Music and Musical Style. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanoich.
• Walter, Don C. 1969. Men and Music in Western Culture. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. ISBN 0-390-91600-5.
• Williams, C. F. Abdy. 1903. The Story of the Organ. London: Walter Scott Publishing Co.; New York: Charles Scribner & Sons.

Further reading

• Benzing, G. M. 2009. "'Se vuoi far soldi, studia la cetra': musica e luxus nell’antica Roma". In Luxus: Il piacere della vita nella Roma imperiale: [Torino, Museo di antichita, 26 settembre 2009 - 31 gennaio 2010], edited by Elena Fontanella, Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato. ISBN 9788824011631.
• Comotti, Giovanni. 1989. Music in Greek and Roman Culture, translated by Rosaria V. Munson. Ancient Society and History. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801833647 (cloth); ISBN 080184231X (pbk).
• Hagel, Stefan, and Christine Harrauer (eds.) (2005). Ancient Greek Music in Performance: Symposion Wien 29. Sept.–1. Okt. 2003. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. ISBN 3-7001-3475-4.
• Landels, J. G. 1999. Music in Ancient Greece & Rome. London and New York: Routledge.
• West, M[artin] L[itchfield]. 1992. Ancient Greek Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-814897-6 (cloth) ISBN 0-19-814975-1 (pbk).
• Wille, Günther. 1967. Musica Romana: Die Bedeutung der Musik im Leben der Römer. Amsterdam: P. Schippers.

External links

• Musica Romana, musicarchaeology, scientific review of ancient Roman music as well as performances, bibliography and descriptions for instruments and notations online (English and German).
• The Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum (TML), an evolving database of the entire corpus of Latin music theory written during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
• Synaulia, dedicated to the reconstruction of historical musical instruments, sound theatre, dance on the basis of ethnology.
• Greek origins of Roman music
• [22] Juvenal