Ancient Greek Musical Notation

Ancient Greek Musical Notation is a Unicode block containing various symbols used in Ancient Greece for composing and writing down music.

The system was popular in Greece from the 9th century BC to the 6th century AD. It consisted of symbols inscribed on stone or metal plates, which represented the pitch and duration of musical notes.

The notation evolved over a period of more than 500 years. It went from simple scales of tetrachords, or divisions of the perfect fourth, to The Perfect Immutable System, encompassing a span of fifteen pitch keys. The most famous example of ancient Greek musical notation is the Seikilos epitaph, a piece of music inscribed on a tombstone.

Any discussion of ancient Greek music, theoretical, philosophical or aesthetic, is fraught with two problems. First, there are few examples of written music, which makes the exploration difficult. Second, there are many theoretical and philosophical accounts, sometimes fragmentary. All in all, the notation was applied to both vocal and instrumental music, but much of it has been lost and is only partially understood today.

The symbols in this block include instrumental and vocalic notation, plus further inscriptions. Copy them to your history report and get an excellent mark from your teacher!