Music of ancient Greece

thumb|300px|Classical Athens|Attic [[relief (4th century BCE) depicting an aulos player and his family standing before Dionysos and a female consort, with theatrical masks displayed above]] The dithyramb (; , dithyrambos) was an ancient Greek hymn sung and danced in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility; the term was also used as an epithet of the god. Plato, in The Laws, while discussing various kinds of music mentions "the birth of Dionysos, called, I think, the dithyramb." Plato also remarks in the Republic that dithyrambs are the clearest example of poetry in which the poet is t

oldest surviving complete musical composition

musical traditions of ancient Greece

thumb|right|250px|Aoidos and outer space; [[allegory by Mikhail Kurushin]] The Greek word '''''''' (; plural: , ) referred to a classical Greek singer. In modern Homeric scholarship, it is used by some as the technical term for a skilled oral epic poet in the tradition to which the Iliad and Odyssey'' are believed to belong (compare rhapsode).

Microtonality is the use in music of microtones — intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals". It may also be extended to include any music using intervals not found in the customary Western tuning of twelve equal intervals per octave. In other words, a microtone may be thought of as a note that falls "between the keys" of a piano tuned in equal temperament.

legendary early poet from Lycia

manuscript

A kitharode (Latinized citharode)

A tonary is a liturgical book in the Western Christian Church which lists by incipit various items of Gregorian chant according to the Gregorian mode (tonus) of their melodies within the eight-mode system. Tonaries often include Office antiphons, the mode of which determines the recitation formula for the accompanying text (the psalm tone if the antiphon is sung with a psalm, or canticle tone if the antiphon is sung with a canticle), but a tonary may also or instead list responsories or Mass chants not associated with formulaic recitation. Although some tonaries are stand-alone works, they wer

overview of ancient Greek music theory

Ancient Greek musical fragment

terms in music theory to characterize scales