Epitaph of Seikilos Song (epigram) First Century CE un By BAe wg— ad Aw ~ od mi - den ho- los su tw = pou. ckKzikikt oo xpos 6 - M-yov fo - dow) Gis pros o- li-gon es - ti to in, ckKOtZ Ket CX to thos 5 ypd- vos Ge nau ~ teH to te-los ho chro-nos a- pe - ti Hoson zis phenou As longas you live, be lighthearted. miden holos su lupou Let nothing trouble you, pros oligon esti to zin Life is only too short, totelosho chronos apeti. _and time takes its toll. Copenhagen, National Museum, Inventory No.14897 (lor photograph, see HWM, p. 1, Figure 1.10). From Thomas |. Mathiesen, Apollos Lyre: Grek Musicand Music Theory Antiquity and the Midae Ages (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1999), 149, Reprinted by permission, «©1999 bythe University of Nebraska Press Phonetic transliteration by Thomas J. Mathiesen, © 2001 by Thomas . Mathiesen, Used by permission1 + Epitaph of Seikilos Eg ‘The Epitaph of Seikilos is a brief song inscribed on a tombstone dating from the first century CE (Common Era, equivalent to AD). Originally erected in southwestern Turkey, near the modem city of Aydin, the round stone column (shown in Figure 1.10 in HWM, p.17) is now in the National Museum in Copenhagen. The opening lines of the inscription make clear the purpose of the stone: Jam tombstone, an icon. Seikilos placed me here as an everlasting sign of deathless remembrance. The poem that follows (translated on p. 1) is an epigram, a short verse that makes a pointed remark. often by wittily juxtaposing contrasting ideas. Here we are encouraged to be cheerful, not in spite of death and the ravages of time but. ironically, because of them. The ethos of the epigram is one of moderation between extremes, The inscription ends with two lines whose meaning is uncertain but which appear to ascribe the poem and perhaps the music to Seikilos. Above the words of the epigram are letters and other symbols representing pitches in Greek notation. Above these symbols are signs indicating durations. The score included here shows the original notation above the modern transcription with the Greek text and a phonetic transliteration. The clear rhythmic notation has made this song of particular interest to historians. The notes without rhythmic markings above the alphabetical signs are worth one unit of duration (protos chronos), rendered in the transcription as an eighth note. The horizontal dash (—) indicates a diseme, worth two units, and the horizontal dash with an upward stroke to the right is a triseme, worth three. Note that the duration indicated is that of the syllable, not of the pitch, so that a diseme may include two pitches (as in the second line) and the triseme one, two, or three (as at the end of each line). It is possible to transcribe the piece into modern notation using tables given by Alypius in his Introductio musica, probably compiled in the late fourth or fifth century CE. Alypius presented the letter notations for fifteen tonoi, each of which places the sequence of intervals in the Greater Perfect System in a specific range (see HWM. p. 15). There are two sets of letters foreach tonos—one for vocal pitches and the other for instruments. The Epitaph of Seikilos uses the vocal notes of the diatonic Iastian tonos, conventionally transcribed as the two-octave scale from B tob! with two sharps: d 7 1 X& © C O K | ZA U @ Ww ae : > The musie reflects the text in several important ways. Most obvious, the four lines of poetry are set to four distinet musical phrases, each the same length (twelve units of time) and each closing with a triseme preceded by another long duration. The Greek language had long and short syllables: all the long syllables in the epitaph are set to long durations, so that the music follows the rhythms of the oe *1+ Epitaph of Seikilos text. Each phrase begins with a rising gesture up to e’ and then falls to a cadence, paralleling the inflections of speech. The gradual descent through an octave in the final phrase creates a strong sense of closure. The lastian tonos is consistent with the moderate ethos of the epigram, balanced between two extremes. In Alypius’s arrangement of the fifteen tonoi, the lastian is number 7, intermediate between the lowest, Hypodorian, and the highest, Hyperlydian, and is thus among the most moderate of tonoi. The use of the diatonic genus is also appropriate for an ethos of moderation because it avoids the more extreme emotions associated with the chromatic and enharmonic genera The melody is restricted to the central octave from e to e’, The octave species is the one called Phrygian by Cleonides, with a succession of whole and half steps equivalent to the octave from D to D on the white keys of a piano. The high and low notes receive special emphasis—e' as the topmost pitch in all four phrases and e as the last note in the piece. The notes a and c¥’ are also prominent as the most frequent notes (cach occurs eight times) and the notes used to begin phrases Today and perhaps also then, the melodic major thirds that begin or end the last three phrases would be perceived as bright, as would the rising fifth at the opening. These bright intervals cast the message of the poem ina somewhat optimistic light. This melody is interesting also because it conforms closely to Greek theoretical writings on melody. It uses patterns described by theorists such as Cleonides and Aristides Quintilianus: repeating notes, as in the first and fourth phrases; moving up or down the scale, as in the second phrase; and repeating the same interval succession a step lower or higher, as at the end of the third phrase (c#’-a, b-g) and the beginning of the fourth (a-ct’, bd"). Subtle melodic resemblances link each phrase to the next. For example, the last four notes of the first phrase are echoed at the beginning of the second; the second and third phrases end with the same three notes and rhythms; and the third and fourth phrases begin with similar contours. Like the poem, the music is more complex and intriguing than it may appear at first hearing. We do not know on what occasions, in what circumstances, or by whom such a song would have been sung. Although there is no indication of an accompaniment, a singer would likely have accompanied himself or herself on a lyre or other plucked string instrument, perhaps playing the melody in unison with the voice or sounding the a, e, or other prominent notes. On the accompanying recording, the melody is first played on the lyre, then sung in unison with the lyre. Poetry that was accompanied by a lyre (or by another plucked string instrument) was known as lyric poetry, which in later centuries became a term for relatively brief poems in regular meter that express a feeling or personal viewpoint, as this poem does.