Music of ancient Rome
Music was customary at funerals, and the tibia (Greek aulos), a woodwind instrument, was played at sacrifices to ward off ill influences.
Under the influence of ancient Greek theory, music was thought to reflect the orderliness of the cosmos, and was associated particularly with mathematics and knowledge.
[3] Music accompanied public spectacles, events in the arena, and was part of the performing art form called pantomimus, an early form of story ballet that combined expressive dancing, instrumental music, and a sung libretto.
Ancient Roman art displays tibicines, or players of the tibia, playing behind altars.
[20] Female musicians, dancers, and singers would perform at a festival for the goddess Isis who had a temple in Rome.
[27] Titus Livius, a Roman historian, described an incident where players of the flute were barred from eating and drinking in the temples.
Afterward, they retreated to Tivoli, and were allowed to continue eating and drinking in the temples when the Senate realized there were no musicians for religious services.
[41][42][43][44] During plays, the actors, pantomimes, and tragedians would be accompanied by a chorus of singers and an orchestra of wind or percussion instruments.
[58] The Actian games, which was an ancient Roman festival of Apollo, also held musical competitions.
[59] The Greeks and Romans might have held musical performances in between the meal and the drinking party during dinner.
[66] It also believed that a singer's neck should be soft and smooth to ensure that the voice did not sound harsh or broken.
[65][67] Marcus Tullius Cicero stated that musicians "sit for many years practicing delivery, and every day, before they begin to speak, gradually arouse their voices while lying in bed; and when they have done that they sit up and make their voices run down from the highest to the lowest level, in some way joining the highest and the lowest together.
"[68] According to The Twelve Caesars, Nero would train his voice by avoiding harmful fruits and drinks, purging himself with vomiting and enemas, and lying on his back with a lead sheet on his chest.
[66] Other ancient texts describe singers perform warm-up exercises consisting of vocalized successive sounds before singing.
Cornelius Nepos, a Roman historian and biographer, in his biography of the 4th century BC Greek general Epaminondas describes his famed skill at music and dancing as a negative characteristic.
[74] Plutarch wrote that the prominence of the flute in Theban society was designed by their legislators to "relax and mollify their strong and impetuous natures in earliest boyhood.
"[75] The ancient Romans considered music to be a powerful tool and believed that it was capable of inciting strong emotions in people.
Quintilian believed that music was "the most beautiful art" and that it was necessary for properly reading the work of ancient poets.
"[83] Cicero believed that musical education could help aspiring politicians learn to better listen to other's arguments and detect imperfections.
[84] Numerous ancient Roman writers such as Plato, Seneca, or Cicero believed that music could effeminize men.
[91] Cicero once wrote:[92] For I agree with Plato that nothing so easily flows into young and impressionable minds as the various notes of the musical scale; it is hard to express the extent of their power in one way or the other.
Many states in Greece considered it important to preserve the ancient style of music; yet their morals changed along with their songs and slid to decadence as a result.
In the old days, Greece used to punish such behaviour harshly, anticipating far in advance how the deadly plague might sink gradually into the minds of citizens and suddenly overturn entire states with evil pursuits and evil ideas—if, indeed, it is true that stern Sparta ordered the strings above the number of seven to be cut off the lyre of Timotheus.Roman art depicts various woodwinds, "brass", percussion and stringed instruments.
[93] Roman-style instruments are found in parts of the Empire where they did not originate, and indicate that music was among the aspects of Roman culture that spread throughout the provinces.
The hydraulic pipe organ (hydraulis), which worked by water pressure, was "one of the most significant technical and musical achievements of antiquity".
[101] The Salii and the Arval Brethren were ancient Roman organizations of priests who danced at religious festivals.
[110][111] Ovid describes drunk people dancing and singing in the streets during festivals such as the Anna Perenna.
[119] Cornelius Nepos associated dance and music with ancient Greek culture, and treated it with disdain.
