Music Before Music?

My answers to inquiries concerning music and dance in the ancient world—Greek, to be precise.

It’s strange, how civilizations long vanished still manage to narrate through time—not in grand assertions or untouched monuments, but in fragments: a broken lyre string, a choreographed step frozen on a vase, a line of musical notation scratched onto a funerary stele. The further we sail from antiquity, the more obsessed we become with rebuilding its inner worlds, as if some part of us still believes that in the right mode, with the right rhythm, the past might sing again.

Nowhere is this more evident than in our attempts to understand the music and dance of the ancient world. Not the kind conducted at Roman banquets on, for instance, Netflix, but the real stuff—the bone-deep, ritual-bound, breath-shaped practices that tied together myth, cosmos, and community. These were not sheer entertainment. They were systems of thought, carriers of memory, representations of the sacred.

We ask—perhaps a little desperately—What did it sound like? How did they move? And beneath those technical questionings lies a more crucial desire: What did it mean?

Because ancient music, and dance, were not separated arts but forms of knowledge, ethereal experiments delivered in sound and motion. They were prayers disguised as performance, philosophies choreographed into flesh and bones. Yes, analyzing them is cataloging instruments and manners, but it is also entering into the worldview of individuals for whom rhythm aligned the soul with the stars, and melody mirrored the logic of speech, of spirit, of the state.

And so we begin. What follows is a comparatively long exploration, equal parts technical and philosophical, into how the ancients tuned their lives to the invisible: through song, through step, through a grammar of motion lost to time, but not, conceivably, beyond recollection.

ἄρχωμεν, ὦ φίλοι.
Let us begin, O friends.

I. Instruments and Sound

• What instruments were used in the ancient world, and how were they constructed?

To speak of ancient music is to speak of breath and bone, string and skin. The most well-known instruments across the Mediterranean world were, of course, the lyre, the kithara, and the aulos, with percussion instruments like the tympanon (hand drum) and krotala (clappers or castanets) often completing the performance. In Minoan and Egyptian contexts, harps appear in vivid wall paintings—slender, tall, arched like the backs of dancers.

Construction was a matter of necessity elevated to art. The lyre was fashioned from a tortoise shell (often an actual shell), with goat gut strings stretched over a yoke of wood—usually boxwood, ivory, or horn. It was a creature reborn into harmony. The aulos, frequently misunderstood as a "flute," was in fact a double-reeded pipe, often played in pairs, like twin serpents spiraling around the breath of the player. It was constructed of reed, bone, ivory, or bronze, depending on region and wealth.

Man playing aulos, Attic red-figure cup painted by the Euaion Painter, 460 B.C.–450 B.C.

• Did they carry any significance, maybe ritual or sacrifical?

Absolutely. The ancients did not divide material from meaning as we do. The tortoise shell, used in lyres, was sacred to Hermes, the trickster god who—according to the Homeric Hymns—invented the lyre by killing a tortoise and stringing its shell with tendons. Animal gut was not just utilitarian but instinctive: music, literally drawn from the entrails of the sacrificial body. The use of ivory, gold, or precious woods was not exclusively for acoustics or decoration but denoted class, divine blessing, and ritual celibacy.

In ritual contexts—particularly Dionysian and Orphic ceremonies—the instruments were representatives of transformation. The aulos, for instance, was associated with euphoric rites and was believed to induce trance states. Plato, famously suspicious of its power, saw it as dangerously irrational :)

Orpheus playing his lyre. Athenian red-figure clay vase, about 450 BC.

• How did instruments like the aulos function in practice, technically and emotionally?

The aulos was possibly the most mighty and paradoxical of ancient instruments. Its double pipes were played simultaneously, one often for melody, the other for hum or counterpoint, and its reeds required tremendous breath control—so much so that players wore a phorbeia, a leather strap to support the cheeks under pressure.

Technically, it was closer to an oboe than a flute, but its penetrating, reedy, almost indelible sound made it ideal for processions, funerals, and mystery cults. It could simulate lament, exaltation, or divine frenzy. Aristophanes mocked it, Plato banned it, yet in the Theban and Delphic traditions, it was essential.

Emotionally, the aulos was the sound of possession, not performance. When played in the rites of Dionysus, it was not for harmony, but for disintegration, for the surrender of self. In Sparta, it accompanied the march of hoplites, while in Athens, it sounded through the Theater of Dionysus. It is music that does not ask to be understood—it demands to be felt, or feared.

• What did ancient tuning systems sound like?

The Greek tonal system was non-equal-tempered and based on tetrachords—four-note structures with internal intervallic formulas that could be joined to form scales. Instead of our twelve-tone chromatic scale, they had a far more fluid system, one which likely sounded closer to Middle Eastern or Byzantine music: richly microtonal, waving, often inharmonious to the modern Western ear.

Each mode (harmonia)—Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, etc.—was believed to possess psychological and ethical effects. The Dorian mode was strong and masculine, fit for warriors. The Lydian, effeminate and luxurious. This wasn’t aesthetic; it was moral architecture, with tones mapping onto virtues and vices.

The central octave of the ancient Greek system

Aristotle in the Politics (viii:1340a:40–1340b:5):

But melodies themselves do contain imitations of character. This is perfectly clear, for the harmoniai have quite distinct natures from one another, so that those who hear them are differently affected and do not respond in the same way to each. To some, such as the one called Mixolydian, they respond with more grief and anxiety, to others, such as the relaxed harmoniai, with more mellowness of mind, and to one another with a special degree of moderation and firmness, Dorian being apparently the only one of the harmoniai to have this effect, while Phrygian creates ecstatic excitement. These points have been well expressed by those who have thought deeply about this kind of education; for they cull the evidence for what they say from the facts themselves.¹

Aristotle remarks further:

From what has been said it is evident what an influence music has over the disposition of the mind, and how variously it can fascinate it—and if it can do this, most certainly it is what youth ought to be instructed in.²

II. Acoustics

• How did the acoustics of ancient amphitheaters and sacred spaces influence musical performance?

Comprehending ancient acoustics starts with recalling that these were societies who believed sound was not merely physical, but esoteric—that the voice could cross points between mortals and gods, between the visible and the veiled. So they built accordingly.

The Greek amphitheater, particularly in places like Epidaurus, is a marvel of both engineering and ontological intent. Without amplification, the whisper of a chorus member or the pluck of a lyre can be heard from the front row to the gods' seats—often 50 rows up. This isn’t an accident, clearly. These theaters were carved into natural hillsides, their semi-circular shape deliberately chosen to concentrate sound toward the center. Modern tests have shown that sound waves travel cleanly and are reflected evenly, aided by the limestone seating, which absorbs low-frequency crowd noise and amplifies higher-frequency human speech.

But it wasn’t only about clarity—it was about presence. The architecture created a shared sonic field, an acoustic unity wherein the audience both heard music and were immersed in it. In mystery cult sites—Eleusis, Delphi, Samothrace—this effect was even more evident. Sound in these places became a kind of spiritual envelope, covering the initiate in a shared, rumbling truth.

Epidaurus

• Were compositions tailored to the physical environment, or vice versa?

It’s a bit like asking whether the altar was shaped for the god, or whether the god displayed himself through the shape of the altar. The answer is: both. Musicians and choreuts (choral dancers) composed with space in mind. The strophe and antistrophe in choral odes are spatial as well as lyrical movements—sound and motion sweeping from one side of the orchestra to the other, resounding across marble and air.

But the environments themselves—especially temples and sacred woodlands—were constructed with a keen sense of resonance. For instance, the Temple of Apollo at Delphi was not just a place for ritual but for sonic alignment. The natural echo of the valley, the orientation of the columns, even the absorbent quality of the stone—all these shaped how the aulos lamented, how the priestess spoke, how the god replied.

So yes, compositions were tailored. Hymns rose with the sun because the angle of light and air changed how sound travelled. A lament might be sung at the mouth of a cave, so the echoes could simulate the voices of the underworld. These were cultures that believed in parity—that a note could mimic a wind, that a chord might mirror the stars.

What we find, again and again, is that the architecture of performance was the architecture of belief.

III. Rhythm and Melody

• What were the primary rhythmic and melodic systems used in ancient music?

The Greeks, especially, did not separate music from mathematics, ethics, or cosmology. In fact, melos—the word for melody—incorporated music, lyric poetry, and dance all at once. It was not a separate art form, but a mode of being.

According to Aristides Quintilianus (On Music, i.12), melic composition is subdivided into three classes: dithyrambic, nomic, and tragic. These parallel his three classes of rhythmic composition: systaltic, diastaltic and hesychastic. Each of these broad classes of melic composition may contain various subclasses, such as erotic, comic, and panegyric, and any composition might be elevating (diastaltic), depressing (systaltic), or soothing (hesychastic).³

The classification of the requirements we have from Proclus's Useful Knowledge as preserved by Photios:

1. for the gods—hymn, prosodion, paean, dithyramb, nomos, adonidia, iobakchos, and hyporcheme;

2. for humans—encomion, epinikion, skolion, erotica, epithalamia, hymenaios, sillos, threnos, and epikedeion;

3. for the gods and humans—partheneion, daphnephorika, tripodephorika, oschophorika, and eutika

Melodically, the system was based not on harmony in the modern sense, but on modes (or harmoniai)—distinct scalar patterns that carried ethical and emotional valence. The Dorian mode was rigid, manly, disciplined. The Phrygian, ecstatic, vibrant—favored in Dionysian rites. The Lydian was soft, even effeminate, and thus suspicious in Plato’s eyes. Each was believed to shape the soul, not merely through its intervals, but through the ethos it demanded. This was musical psychology before Freud, tonal ethics before Kant.

These modes were built from tetrachords, as we’ve already discussed, four-note spans, sliding across a tonal framework defined by microtonal distinctions. Unlike the even-tempered scale we inherit, Greek tuning (like the Pythagorean or Archytan system) had nuanced intervals, sometimes so subtle as to avoid modern ears. Think of it as a music of fine gradations rather than fixed steps. It wasn't built for simplicity; it was built to mirror the complexity of human sentiment and heavenly tension.

• Were there time signatures—or some form of metrical division—in their understanding of rhythm?

Not in the way we imagine today, with keen notations and barlines. But rhythm in antiquity was deeply ordered—and in many ways, more integrated into language than our modern systems allow. It was based on a quantitative meter, drawn from poetry, where long and short syllables formed patterns analogous to musical feet. Think: dactyls, anapests, iambs.

We might call it prosodic rhythm, or linguistic meter as music. A choral ode, for instance, wasn’t solely sung with rhythm; the language was the rhythm. The beat followed the syllables, and thus rhythm became inseparable from meaning. And where there was no language—say, in an instrumental interlude—dancers or instrumentalists often adhered to metric patterns inherited from poetic forms. In that sense, the dance, the drum, and the verse all breathed the same metrical air.

According to scholar H. D. F. Kitto:

The Greek verb choreuo, 'I am a member of the chorus', has the sense 'I am dancing'. The word ode means not something recited or declaimed, but 'a song'". The large section of the stage where the chorus danced and sang is the 'orchestra' which is translated to mean a 'dancing floor'.⁴

In some cases, rhythm also emerged from motion: dancers shaped time with the body, just as much as drummers marked it by sound. The result? A system without time signatures, but not without time. A fluid but relentless temporality, tied to speech, breath, and ceremony.

IV. Notation and Transmission

• How was music notated—if at all?

Yes—music was notated. But the surviving system is sparse, mysterious, and notated more like a cipher than a script. The Greeks devised a form of musical notation by the 5th century BCE, using alphabetic symbols placed above the text to indicate pitch, and sometimes rhythm. There were two systems: one for vocal music and one for instrumental music, each with their own characters—a double code for a doubly sacred act.

But notation was not the norm, nor the primary method of conservation. Most compositions were never written down. Music lived where the voice lived: in the breath of performance, in ritual repetition, and in collective memory. Writing it down was a rare act—perhaps done to honor, to teach, or to memorialize. In other words, notation was often commemorative rather than performative.

Ancient Greek musical notation (from Meyers Lexikon, 1895, 7/973) 

• What can surviving fragments tell us about harmonic and tonal thinking?

As a sample, the Seikilos epitaph provides us with a rare, beautiful glimpse into ancient harmonic and tonal thinking. The melody itself is written in a monophonic style, meaning it’s a single melodic line without accompaniment. Yet, even in this simplicity, we see evidence of thoughtful tonal structure.

This piece demonstrates the use of modes—specifically the Mixolydian mode, which is characterized by its slightly flattened seventh scale degree. This provides the melody with a somewhat more ambiguous emotional tonality—neither wholly joyful nor sorrowful, but something in between, much like the tone of life itself, which the Seikilos epitaph so poignantly evokes:

"While you live, shine,
Have no grief at all.
Life exisits only for a short while,
And time demands its toll."

From such fragments, we can infer that the ancient Greeks had a sophisticated understanding of tonality. Though not harmonically complicated in the modern sense (lacking multiple simultaneous voices), they seemed to understand tonal relationships—how certain notes can suggest resolution, while others evoke tension.

In a way, this epitaph is the ancient equivalent of a contemporary pop song—simple, memorable, and emotionally resonant. Yet it’s far more than just a tune; it encapsulates the philosophical stance that permeated Greek thought. Music was not simply for entertainment; it was for reflection on the fleeting nature of life, and through it, a more profound association with both the earthly and eternal.

Seikilos Stele, c. 1st or 2nd century AD, Tralles, Asia Minor

• Was musical knowledge transmitted orally, ritually, or scholastically?

All three—but not equally, and never separately. Oral tradition dominated. Music was learned by listening, repeating, embodying—passed down through generational recollection rather than manuscript. The rhapsodes who performed Homer, the kitharists of Apollo’s temples, the choral dancers of Dionysian festivals—they memorized through movement, intonation, and collective rhythm. To forget the song was to fail in duty, not just to art but to ancestral facts.

Ritual transmission was even more mighty. Certain hymns, rhythms, and choreographies were protected in mystery cults or seasonal rites. You didn’t learn them by reading, but by entering the rite—dancing with the initiated, moving as they moved, singing as they sang. Music here was not knowledge, but transformation.

Scholastic transmission, meanwhile, took shape in the philosophical schools—Pythagoreans, Aristoxenians, Neoplatonists—who tried to codify what had always been lived. Their writings examined modes, intervals, and ethics of sound, often more as the theory of the cosmos than a performance manual. Music, for them, was a mathematical and moral science.

So yes: music was remembered with the body, theorized by the mind, and performed in the presence of the sacred.

V. Choreography and Movement

• How were dances choreographed? Who designed them?

In the ancient world, dance was never simply ornamental. It was ritual architecture in motion, a structured unfolding of story, symbol, and sacred geometry. The Greeks, in particular, invented a rich vocabulary of dance—orchēsis—integrated into drama, theology, combat, and schooling.

Choreography as we understand it today—steps notated, designed for repeatable aesthetics—did not exist in quite that way. Instead, dances were designed in context: for a ritual, a tragedy, a festival. And they were taught by the experienced: priests, elders, chorus leaders, or in some cases professional choregoi—sponsors and directors of dramatic choruses. In Sparta, boys were drilled in military dances by their trainers, where every motion was a preparation for war. In Athens, kids learned pyrrhichios and geranos, sometimes from performers (citizens and slaves, priestesses and prostitutes, teenage initiates and connoisseurs) or teachers attached to temples or gymnasia.

Fun Fact 1: According to a tradition reported by Aristotle, the originator of the pyrriche was Achilles, who danced it around the funeral pyre of Patroclus.⁵

Fun Fact 2: Geranos (crane dance) was originated by Theseus on his return from Crete. He was said to have performed in Delos, which was customary in this island as late as the time of Plutarch.⁶

Significantly, choreography was often group-based, built on communal synchronization rather than individual ornament. The circular formation was principal—a reflection, perhaps, of divine cycles, of social equality, or of ritual containment. Think of the choral dances of Delos, where maidens moved as one, offering both beauty and heavenly order to Apollo.

• How was motion seen? Symbolic or didactic, perhaps?

Both, frankly. Ancient dance was rarely barren motion. Movement was packed with meaning, layered with mythic memory, ethical training, and divine resonance.

In the mystery cults, dancers imitated the deaths and rebirths of gods. In tragedies, choreography gave physical form to grief, revenge, moral dilemmas. A chorus turning slowly clockwise might suggest the passage of time, the inevitability of fate, or the trajectory of divine will. Motions weren’t just expressive, they were philosophical poses. They guided the dancers (and the audience) on how to feel, what to remember, and how to exist within the order of the world.

Even in secular contexts—weddings, symposia, festivals—dances reflected social roles, gender norms, interpersonal dynamics. A young woman’s steps at a coming-of-age rite were a symbolic transition, a lesson in elegance, modesty, and enthusiasm. A soldier’s footwork on the training ground was at once a dance and a doctrine: of balance, coordination, and courage.

To move was to mean. To dance was to enter a grammar of the body, led not by books, but by imitation, initiation, and immersion in story.

VI. Symbolism and Sacred Meaning

• What does ancient music reveal about the soul’s relationship to the divine?

To briefly summarize what we’ve talked about until now, ancient music, in its essence, was not entertainment. It was a transcendental orientation. Harmony was a cosmic principle as well. The soul, conceived by thinkers like Plato and Pythagoras as a microcosm of the universe, was believed to be governed by the same mathematical ratios that structured divine motion. To tune an instrument was to tune the soul; to play rightly was to participate in a divine architecture.

In this sense, music was the audible face of the invisible order. It offered not a path to the gods but a way of being like them. Sound became the bridge between the seen and the unseen—between the trembling flesh of mortals and the cold, eternal geometry of the cosmos.

• Was music used as prayer, spell, or invocation at all?

All three—without contradiction.

Music in the ancient world was not divided into sacred and secular as we imagine today. The hymn to Apollo sung at Delphi was prayer. The paean sung before battle was invocation. The Orphic songs, whispered in mystery rites, were spellwork—meant not to praise the gods, but to bind them, to persuade, to protect. In these contexts, music was not about reverence; it was about participation in divine mechanics!

This is why silence, too, was meaningful. That which was too sacred to speak was better intoned, vibrated through string and breath, than spoken plainly.

• Was music considered capable of shaping the soul or maybe the state even?

Undeniably. In the ancient world, music was not a reflection of character—it was a force that formed it.

The Greeks believed that the soul could be tuned, much like a lyre. And if music could harmonize the soul, then it could also disorder it. This is why ethos theory—the idea that musical modes could influence moral disposition—was taken not as speculative but axiomatic.

To Plato, music was civic architecture. In The Republic, he prescribes and proscribes with the severity of a physician dispensing cures. The Phrygian mode might stir courage; the Lydian might breed softness. Harmonic choices were political ones. The wrong melody, repeated often enough, could destroy a polis.

Thus, music was ruling in disguise.

• But why did philosophers like Plato prescribe or prohibit certain modes?

Because they feared the power of music to evade reason and move the soul directly.

Plato understood that the psyche responds to pathos before logos—that melody reaches us before meaning does. Modes were moral judgments as well.

He saw the arts not as neutral, but as dangerous if untethered from philosophical clarity. A city that allowed dissonant music would, in time, allow dissonant laws. A citizen lulled into softness by precious harmonies would lack the discipline of reason. So he set musical boundaries for the same reason he banished poets from his ideal city: because they could move us too well.

To allow the wrong kind of music, in Plato’s eyes, was to invite political decay through aesthetic seduction.

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If anything comes to your mind after reading this piece, just ask—questions, thoughts, whatever. And if you want to have any more visual, textual, or auditory sources, let me know and I shall provide right away.

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1. Barker, A, ed. (1984–1989). Greek Musical Writings. Cambridge, UK / New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Volume 1: ISBN 0-521-23593-6; Volume 2: ISBN 0-521-30220-X

2. Aristotle (1912). A Treatise on Government. Translated by Ellis, William. London, UK / Toronto, ON / New York, NY: J.M. Dent (UK, CA) / E.P. Dutton (NY). alt. title Politics

3. Mathiesen, Thomas J. (2001a). "Greece, §I: Ancient". In Sadie, Stanley; Tyrrell, John (eds.). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd ed.). London, UK: Macmillan.

4. Kitto, H.D.F. (March 1956). "The Greek Chorus". Educational Theatre Journal. 8 (1): 1–8. doi:10.2307/3203909. JSTOR 3203909.

5. Aristotle, frag. 519 (V. Rose, Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta, Leipzig 1886, p. 325).

6. Plutarch, Life of Theseus 21.