著者

津上 英輔

出版者

美学会

雑誌

美學 (ISSN:05200962)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.45, no.1, pp.31-41, 1994-06-30

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Along with theoretical explications in music and the very concept music', both inherited from ancient Greece, another channel of classical tradition is found in the realm of Western music : namely notated fragments from the ancient Greek world. They were first introduced to the West Europeans by Vincenzo Galilei in his Dialogo (1581). Yet curiously enough, he did not pay due attention which, in our eyes, such a direct evidence of ancient music should deserve. For he attempts here to elucidate and almost consecrate antiquity as a model of contemporary music. This inconsistency reveals the peculiar character of his attitude to ancient music : he was not so much interested in the real configuration of the Greek musical practice itself as in the image of ancient music gathered from literary, that is, secondary sources. The classical tradition in Western music is thus characterized by its indirectness. Accordingly the reconstructed image was largely influenced by the view of the classics current in other genres of art. In this way music could share aesthetic ideals with the plastic arts and literature.