and
Shielding the house from storms, on the north were the barns
and the farm-yard.
Now if we think that these lines can be sung to the same
musical rhythm we are very far from the truth, although both
are hexameters, namely,
[- ' ' - ' - ' ' - ' ' - ' ' - -]
[- ' ' - ' - ' ' - ' ' - ' ' - -]
dactyls, ending with spondee.
Thus we see that metre in verse and rhythm in music are two
different things, although of course they both had the same
origin.
After all has been said, it is perhaps best to admit that, so
far as Greek music is concerned, its better part certainly lay
in poetry. In ancient times all poetry was sung or chanted; it
was what I have called impassioned speech. The declamation of
"The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" constituted what was really the
"vocal" music of the poems. With the Greeks the word "music"
(_mousike_) included all the aesthetic culture that formed part
of the education of youth; in the same general way a poet was
called a singer, and even in Roman times we find Terence, in
his "Phormio," alluding to poets as musicians. That Aeschylus
and Sophocles were not musicians, as we understand the term,
is very evident in spite of the controversies on the subject.
Impassioned speech, then, was all that existed of vocal music,
and as such was in every way merely the audible expression of
poetry. I have no doubt that this is the explanation of the
statement that Aeschylus and Sophocles wrote what has been
termed the _music_ to their tragedies. What they really did
was to teach the chorus the proper declamation and stage
action. It is well known that at the Dionysian Festival
it was to the poet as "chorus master" that the prize was
awarded, so entirely were the arts identified one with the
other. That declamation may often reach the power of music,
it is hardly necessary to say. Among modern poets, let any
one, for instance, look at Tennyson's "Passing of Arthur" for
an example of this kind of music; the mere sound of the words
completes the picture. For instance, when Arthur is dying and
gives his sword, Excalibur, to Sir Bedivere with the command
to throw it into the mere, the latter twice fails to do so,
and returns to Arthur telling him that all he saw was
"The water lapping on the crag
And the long ripple washing in the reeds."