B. Accent in Ancient Greek

If there were any doubt that the Greek accent was an affair of pitch rather than of stress, the eleventh chapter of this treatise would go far to remove it. It is clear that Dionysius describes the difference between the acute and the grave accent as a variation of pitch, and that he considers this variation to be approximately the same as the musical interval of a fifth, or (as he himself explains) three tones and a semitone. Similarly Aristoxenus (Harm. i. 18) writes λέγεται γὰρ δὴ καὶ λογῶδές τι μέλος, τὸ συγκείμενον ἐκ τῶν προσῳδιῶν τῶν ἐν τοῖς ὀνόμασιν· φυσικὸν γὰρ τὸ ἐπιτείνειν καὶ ἀνιέναι ἐν τῷ διαλέγεσθαι (‘for there is a kind of melody in speech which depends upon the accent of words, as the voice in speaking rises and sinks by a natural law,’ Macran). The expression προσῳδία itself (cp. τάσεις φωνῆς αἱ καλούμεναι προσῳδίαι, 196 16) implies a melodic character, and the adjectives (ὀξύς and βαρύς) which denote ‘acute’ and ‘grave’ are used regularly in Greek music for what we call ‘high’ and ‘low’ pitch.[62] It would be hard to believe that βαρύς could ever have indicated an absence of stress.

That such a musical pitch—such a rising or falling of tone—can be quite independent of quantity seems to be proved by the analogy of Vedic Sanskrit, inasmuch as, when reciting verses in that language, the native priests are said to succeed in keeping quantity and musical accent altogether distinct. “We cannot now say exactly how Homer’s verse sounded in the ears of the Greeks themselves; and yet we can tell even this more nearly than Matthew Arnold imagined. Sanskrit verse, like Greek, had both quantity and musical accent; and the recitation of the Vedic poems, as handed down by immemorial tradition, and as it may be heard to-day, keeps both these elements clear. It is a sort of intoned recitative, most impressive and agreeable to the sensitive ear.”[63]

A useful handbook on the general subject of Greek Accentuation (including its musical character) is Vendryes’ Traité d’accentuation grecque, which is prefaced by a bibliographical list. The volume is noticed, in the Classical Review xix. 363-367, by J. P. Postgate, who supplements it in some important directions. There is also a discussion of the nature and theory of the Greek accent in Hadley’s Essays pp. 110-127. As Monro (Modes p. 113) remarks, it is our habit of using Latin translations of the terms of Greek grammar that has tended to obscure the fact that those terms belong in almost every case to the ordinary vocabulary of music. The point of the illustration drawn from the Orestes, in the C.V. c. 11, is that the musical setting in question neglected entirely the natural tune, or accent, of the words. It is not to be assumed that Dionysius approved (except within narrow limits) of this practice or of the corresponding neglect of syllabic quantity ( 128 19). He probably regarded such excesses as innovations due to inferior schools of music and rhythm. In the hymns found at Delphi (and also in an inscription discovered by W. M. Ramsay) there is a remarkable correspondence between the musical notes and the accentuation of the words, as was pointed out by Monro (Modes pp. 90, 91, 116, 141; and Classical Review ix. 467-470). It is the hymns to Apollo (belonging probably to the early part of the third century B.C.), in which the acute accents usually coincide with a rise of pitch, that Dionysius would doubtless have regarded as embodying the classical practice. In early times, it must be remembered, words and music were written by the same man; cp. G. S. Farnell Greek Lyric Poetry pp. 41, 42. The chief surviving fragments of Greek music (including the recent discoveries at Delphi) will be found in C. Jan’s Musici Scriptores Graeci (with Supplement), as published by Teubner.