Melos

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Melos ( Greek  μέλος "member"; "sage", "song", "melody") is a basic term of the melodically oriented ancient Greek music . In contrast to the melody , in which the pitch progressions are characterized by measure , rhythm and harmony , the melos focuses on the tone sequences and the form .

Historically, the word has two different meanings, on the one hand in the sense of "limb" (in Homer ), on the other (post-Homeric) as "wise", "melody", "lyrical poem intended for singing". Aristoxenos explicitly differentiated the musical melos from the linguistic ( prosody ). In musical terms, since Alkman (middle of the 7th century BC) , the word has been used to describe both the sung (fr. 39 Page = 92 Diehl) and the instrumental “tune” (fr. 126 P = 97 D), since Pindar then also the sung lyrical poem ( Olympia  9, 1; in contrast to Epos , Iambos , Elegie andEpigram ).

In the Latin treatises of late antiquity and the Middle Ages, melos is used comparatively rarely as a term and is then used synonymously with cantilena, cantus or melodia.

In the 19th century, Richard Wagner brought the word back into circulation in his work Über das Dirigieren (1869) when he spoke of "Beethoven's melos". After that, it was also accepted into scientific linguistic usage, for example by Werner Danckert , who uses terms such as "ascendency, floating and descending melos".

Melopoiia or Melopöie - in Greek μελοποιία , from μέλος and ποιειν "to make" - denotes the method of making a melos in Greek antiquity, in Plato ( Symposium , 187d) the invention of musical modes, in Aristotle ( Poetics , 1449b) the melodic art, which only brings the verse to full development. In Greek music theory since Aristoxenus, melopoeia was a separate doctrine that followed on from harmonic science, whereby it was primarily about questions of systematic breakdown and not about manual questions of melody formation.

In the 1920s, the term melos was used for more abstract melodic concepts that set themselves apart from the harmonically bound melody . It is of central importance in the twelve-tone theory of the composer Josef Matthias Hauer , where melos is used as a term for twelve-tone series .

literature

chronologically

  • Poetae melici Graeci , ed. v. D. Page, Oxford 1962.
  • Rudolf Westphal : Greek Harmonics and Melopoeia , in A. Rossbach a. R. Westphal: Theory of the musical arts of the Hellenes II , Leipzig, 3rd ed. 1886
  • Melos , 1920 ff, a music magazine founded by Hermann Scherchen .
  • Josef Matthias Hauer : Interpretation of Melos , 1923 and Vom Melos zur Pauke , Vienna: Universal Edition 1925.
  • Werner Danckert: Primeval symbols of melodic design , Kassel 1932
  • Hermann Koller: Melos , in: Glotta XLIII, 1965.
  • Markus Bandur: Melodia / Melodie , in: Manual dictionary of musical terminology , 38 p., 27th delivery 1998. Complete article as pdf
  • Markus Bandur: Melopoiia , in: Manual dictionary of musical terminology , 11 pp., 37th delivery 2004. The introduction as pdf