KOLLER, H.,
Musik und Dichtung im Alten Griechenland. Mit zwanzig Tafeln.
Francke Verlag, Bern/München, 1963. 212p. ills. Cloth wrps. Fore edge little bit stained. 'This book, which quotes in translation and confines Greek type to the notes, is clearly intended for the general reader as well as for the specialist. It aims at giving, without technicalities, an account of the muscial art of ancient Greece in its relation to poetry. This is perhaps not a good way of putting it, since it is a leading theme of the book that poetry, melody, and dance were inimately associated and that poetry, sung and danced by a choir to an instumental accompaniment, was the perfect exemplification of the 'art of the Muses.'The choir of Muses, led and accompanied by Apollo Musagetes, is in fact a symbol of this primaty Greek musical activity and a projection of the human choirs which carried it out. Well and good, Poetry and music are linked by the dependence of melody upon the tonic accent of the words, which makes it inconceivable that the antistrophe of a choral song, with its different accentual pattern, repeated the melody of the strophe. (...) Where Koller puts forward original hypotheses, I fear they are generally unsound and rashly argued. there is much in the book which is true and interesting and attractively put.' (R.P. WINNINGTON-INGRAM in The Classical Review (New Series),1965, pp.193-195).
€ 18.00
(Antiquarian)