Who the Ancient Musicians Were

It is not a difficult thing to know who the ancient Musicians were, seeing that anciently these, the Poets or Diviners, and the Wise men were judged to be one and the same thing — Music being contained within Poetry in such a manner that the ancients, by this word Music, understood not only that science which principally treats of Sounds, of Voices, and of Numbers, as I have said elsewhere, but understood also, joined with it, the study of humane letters.

Whence the Musician was not separated from the Poet, nor the Poet from the Musician: for the Poets of those times being skilled in Music, and the Musicians in Poetry (as Strabo will have it), the one and the other were called by one of these two names, Musician or Poet.

And this is manifest from what Plutarch says: that Heraclides, in that work in which he collected the ancient Musicians and the Inventors of such an art, will have it that Amphion, son of Jove and of Antiope, the builder of the walls of Thebes, was the first who devised the singing of the Cithara and its poetry; and that he was not only a Musician but a Poet also, and the inventor of the instrument named, as Pliny also writes; and that he accompanied his voice to the sound of it.

And following further on he says that Linus of Negropont composed Lamentations and Hymns in verse. Whence it may be believed that he was not only a Poet but a Musician also, seeing that the same Pliny says that he sang to the sound of the Cithara.

Plutarch continues further, saying that Philammon of Delphi composed the birth of Latona and of Diana, and that Demodocus of Corfu, an ancient musician, composed the ruin of Troy, and that in one poem he celebrated the nuptials of Venus and of Vulcan. It is no doubtful thing that he was a Musician, for this is manifest from what has been said above.

Terpander also was a Musician and a Poet, as Plutarch clearly shows, saying that he made Proems in verse to the sound of the Cithara.

Apollo likewise was not ignorant of these two things, as Horace shows, saying:

Ne forte pudori Sit tibi musa liræ solers, & cantor Apollo:

[Let not the Muse skilled upon the lyre, and Apollo the singer, be a shame to you.]

For he says first the player of the Lyre, as one who (as some will have it) was the inventor of it; then he calls him a Poet under the name of Singer.

I shall leave off recounting who Orpheus and Arion were, for it is manifest that they were not only Musicians but most celebrated Poets as well.

Hesiod too was placed among the Musicians, although he never made a practice of accompanying his song with the sound of the Lyre: for he used a laurel rod, with which, striking the air (as Pausanias relates), he made a certain sound, to which he was accustomed to sing his poems. Wherefore the ancients made him a statue with the Cithara upon his knees, and set it among those of Thamyris, Arion, Sacadas, and of other most noble and most excellent Musicians, so as not to deprive him of such an honour.

Pindar likewise was a Musician and a Poet, as may be gathered from his works, and also from what the great Alexander did: for when he had Thebes levelled and ruined, he had these words written upon Pindar’s house (as Dio Chrysostom says): πινδάρου τῶ μουσοποιῶ τὴν στέγην μὴ καίετε — which mean, Do not burn the house of Pindar the musician.

And, not to go on at greater length, the most holy David, King of Jerusalem and a great Prophet, is called by Basil the Great not only a Musician but a Poet also of sacred songs; and by the most learned Jerome he is called Simonides, Pindar, Alcaeus, Flaccus, Catullus, and Serenus, because he wrote the sacred Psalms in lyric verse with an elegant style, after the manner of Horace and of those named.

And it may be believed that he sang them many times to the sound of the Cithara, in the way that he sang when he drove out the malign spirit of Saul. Whence there is no doubt that, having been a Poet, he ought also to be named a Musician, seeing that Holy Scripture calls him in several places Psaltes, which means Singer or Player; and it names his divine Poem the Psaltery.

And of this Origen is witness, in the eighteenth Homily on the twenty-fourth chapter of the book of Numbers, saying: What shall we say of Music? Of which the most wise David had every science, and had gathered the discipline of all Melody and of the Rhythms, so that from all these things he might find out sounds by which he might, in playing, soothe the King troubled and molested by the malign spirit.

The like says Augustine in the seventeenth book, chapter four, of the City of God, as may be seen there.

Every reason, then, persuades us to believe that the ancient Poets themselves sang their own poems, and that they had joined Music with Poetry: for had it been otherwise, they would not have used so often in their compositions this word Sing, as Homer did, who began the Iliad in this manner:

Μῆνιν ἄειδε θεά.

that is: Sing, Goddess, the wrath.

And Hesiod, who began the Theogony in this manner:

Μουσάων Ἑλικωνιάδων ἀρχώμεθ’ ἀείδειν;

which means: Let us begin to Sing of the Muses of Helicon.

To whom we shall add the prince of the Latin Poets, Virgil, who began his Georgics in this manner:

Quid faciat lætas segetes, quo sydere terram Vertere Mecœnas, vlmisq; adiungere vites Conueniat, quæ cura boum, qui cultus habendo Sit pecori. atq; apibus quanta experientia parcis Hinc canere incipiam;

[What makes the crops joyous, beneath what star it is fitting to turn the earth, Maecenas, and to wed the vines to the elms; what care the oxen need, what tending the flock, and how much experience the thrifty bees require — from this I shall begin to sing.]

And to his Aeneid he gave such a beginning:

Arma, virumque cano.

[Arms and the man I sing.]

So too Ovid begins the Fasti with these verses:

Tempora cum causis Latium digesta per annum, Lapsaq; sub terras, ortaq; signa canam.

[Of the seasons with their causes, ordered through the Latin year, and of the constellations sunk beneath the earth and risen again, I shall sing.]

Whence Petrarch, imitating all of these, gave the beginning to one of his canzoni in this manner:

Nel dolce tempo della prima etade. Che nascer vide, & ancor quasi in herba, La fera voglia, che per mio mal crebbe. Perche cantando il duol si disacerba, Canterò com’io vissi in libertade;

[In the sweet season of my early age, which saw born and still scarce sprouting the wild desire that grew to my own hurt — because in singing grief is made less bitter, I shall sing of how I lived in liberty.]

And the modern Ariosto, to follow such a custom, likewise began his elegant poem in this way:

Le donne, i caualier, l’arme, gli amori, Le cortesie, l’audaci imprese io canto.

[Of ladies, of knights, of arms, of loves, of courtesies, of bold enterprises I sing.]

But whither do I go wandering further, when Terence, the comic poet, showing us that Poetry and Music are joined and almost one and the same thing, named it musical Study?

It is no marvel, then, if the Musicians and the Poets were anciently reputed to be one and the same thing.

And although the Poet is sometimes called by this Latin word Vates, which belongs also to the Diviner, this is not beside the purpose, seeing that the one and the other (according to Plato’s opinion) are moved and agitated by one and the same divinity, or divine alienation of mind, and by one and the same frenzy.

Whence Homer names the Musician αὐτοδίδακτος, because he sings not by human instruction but inspired by the Gods — which is discerned from the words he adds, which say:

θεὸς δέ μοι ἐν φρεσὶν οἴμας παντοίας ἐνέφυσεν;

that is: For God implanted in my mind every kind of song.

Therefore many gentile Poets have at times foretold things that were to come — as one sees that Virgil, according to the opinion of Augustine, Holy Doctor, not knowing our Redeemer either by natural light or by living faith, sang his birth under the name of another, when he said:

Vltima cumæi venit iam carminis ætas: Magnus ab integrò, seclorum nascitur ordo. Iam redit & virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna. Iam noua progenies cœlo demittitur alto;

[Now is come the last age of the Cumaean song; the great order of the centuries is born anew. Now the virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns; now a new offspring is sent down from high heaven.]

Although the divine Jerome, writing to Paulinus, is of another opinion — namely that Virgil was moved to sing these things, invited by the Oracles of the Cumaean Sibyl. Just as, a little further on, he sang the deliverance from original sin in this manner:

Te duce si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri Irrita, perpetuo soluent formidine terras:

[Under your leadership, whatever traces of our guilt remain shall be made void and free the earth from perpetual dread.]

And that he who was to be born would be God and Man, following further below:

Ille Deûm vitam accipiet, diuisq; videbit Permixtos heroas, & ipse videbitur illis:

[He shall receive the life of gods, and shall see heroes mingled with gods, and shall himself be seen by them.]

And that the Serpent, the enemy of human nature, was to lose its kingdom, and that something was to remain in us by reason of original sin, saying:

Occidet & Serpens, & fallax herba veneni.

[The Serpent too shall die, and the treacherous poison-herb.]

And:

Pauca tamen suberunt priscæ vestigia fraudis.

[Yet a few traces of the ancient guilt shall lurk beneath.]

Ovid too, in his Metamorphoses, clearly showed the coming of the Son of God in flesh, with these words:

Summo delabor Olympo, Et deus humana lustro sub imagine terras:

[I descend from highest Olympus, and as a god I range the earth beneath a human likeness.]

And of the miracles he did, a little further below he said:

Signa dedi venisse Deum.

[I gave signs that a God had come.]

He also set down the words which those spoke who crucified him — that is, if he were the son of God, that he should free himself from it — and said:

Experiar Deus hic discrimine aperto, An sit mortalis, nec erit dubitabile verum.

[I shall test by open trial whether this be a God or a mortal, and the truth shall be beyond doubt.]

Lucan also sang that which shall come to pass before the future universal and final Judgement, with these words:

Sic cum compage soluta Sæcula tot mundi suprema coegerit hora, Antiquum repetens iterum Chaos, omnia mistis Sidera sideribus concurrent, ignea pontum Astra petent, tellus extendere littora nolet, Excutientq; fretum: fratriq; contraria Phœbe Ibit, & obliquum bigas agitare per orbem Indignata, diem poscet sibi, totaq; discors Machina diuulsi turbabit fœdera mundi. In se magna ruunt:

[So, when the framework is dissolved and the last hour has gathered up so many ages of the world, returning again to ancient Chaos, all the stars shall clash with stars confounded; the fiery constellations shall seek the sea, the earth shall refuse to spread out its shores and shall shake off the flood; Phoebe shall go contrary to her brother and, scorning to drive her chariot along the slanting course, shall claim the day for herself; and the whole discordant fabric of the sundered world shall break its own covenants. Great things fall upon themselves.]

Ovid having likewise sung such a thing with these words:

Esse quoque in fatis reminiscitur, affore tempus Quo mare, quo tellus, correptaq; regia cœli Ardeat, & mundi moles operosa laboret.

[He recalls that it stands also in the fates that a time shall come when sea, when land, and the seized palace of heaven shall burn, and the labouring mass of the world shall be in travail.]

Of these things there are many examples; but leaving them aside, we shall come to those of the Sacred books, and shall find the authority of the most holy Apostle Paul, who, writing to Titus and adducing a sentence of Epimenides the poet, calls him a Prophet, saying: ἴδιος τῶν αὐτῶν προφήτης — which means, A Prophet of their own, that is, of the Cretans.

Since, then, the Musician, and the Poet, or the Diviner, had at that time to be called by one common name, it was fitting also that the name of Wise man should belong to them: for (as Plato makes us aware) it belongs to the true Musician to know and have cognition of all the sciences, and so likewise to the Poet, according to Strabo’s opinion. Wherefore he deserved to be called by the ancients simply the Wise man, seeing that in those times the cities of Greece had their sons taught Poetry, not only for the sake of pleasure, but for the sake of chaste moderation.

Whence the Musicians, who taught Poetry, Song, and the Modes which were played upon the Lyre or Cithara and upon the Pipe, made profession, and attributed to themselves such virtue, of being not only correctors and amenders of morals, but had themselves called masters as well; which thing Homer confirms with these words:

Πὰρ γὰρ ἔην καὶ ἀοιδὸς ἀνήρ, ᾧ πόλλ’ ἐπέτελλεν Ἀτρεΐδης Τροίηνδε κιὼν εἴρυσθαι ἄκοιτιν;

which mean:

He had beside him a Singer, to whom the son of Atreus, going to Troy, gave much charge that he should keep his wife chaste.

Deservedly, then, did the ancients repute the Musicians, the Poets or Diviners, and the Wise men to be one and the same thing.