Recovering Ancient Greek Poetic Melodic Patterns
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22029749 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Thyra-Lilja Altunin (0009-0006-9822-3350, University of Oxford, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 267-302 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-05 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Greek and Roman Musical Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2212-974X • E-ISSN: 2212-9758 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1163/22129758-bja10114 |
| OpenAlex | W4415115180 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
This paper presents a novel method for recovering and analysing the melodic elements of ancient Greek poetic prosody, utilising the commonality between the melodic patterns of speech and music. Central to this analysis is the concept of “melodic contour”, a tool used in both ethnomusicology and phonology. Unlike general pitch progressions (which contain both absolute pitch and movement), melodic contour tracks only the direction of pitch movement, without considering absolute pitch values. The rules of correlation that have been developed based on the relationship observed between musical melody and accent movement in ancient Greek musical fragments allow for the generation of the melodic contours of the Greek words. The paper outlines a procedure for generating these contours and displaying them on a staff of equally spaced lines, enabling for their visualisation and digitisation and for the analysis of specific contour parameters (e.g., shape and turning points) which, in turn, makes it possible to examine the contours in relation to the semantic, syntactic, and metrical structure of the Greek verses
Ancient Greek · Melody · Musical · Musical form · Poetry · Classical Antiquity Studies · Diverse Musicological Studies · Linguistics and language evolution
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |