Greek Influence: Music

Christian missionary and musicologist of the Near East, W.H. Temple Gairdner (1873-1928) contemplated the source of Arabic and Orthodox church music as he heard it during the early 20th century and transcribed in his unprecedented publication, Oriental Hymn Tunes. He had this to say:

"There is reason for believing that the ultimate fons et origo of the music of the whole near east is Greece. The original language of the Book of Daniel proves that Greek music was imposing its nomenclature on Semitic countries some centuries before Christ. The wonderful musical system which, as we know from Plato, had been still earlier fully worked out in Greece, was evidently carried by the conquests of Alexander and his successors all through the Orient, and must have formed part of the culture which was absorbed by the east at that time. It was thus Greek music, which early Christianity found regnant, and the later triumph of Greek influence in Eastern Christendom would confirm the hold of Greek music on all the land under Byzantine influence, including Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. The entrance of the Arabs (the "Saracens") in the seventh century, and later of the Turks, would not alter this. Both Arabs and Turks borrowed everything that had to do with culture, except their languages, from others. The Arabs absorbed that of their Greco-Christian provinces. And so, though no doubt the long centuries with their ebb and flow of conquest wrought great modifications, it seems reasonable to believe that the musical system of all these lands remained Greek in fundamental character.

"This historical reconstruction is admittedly a priori and hypothetical; for, as a matter of fact, the history and fate of Greek music after the classical age lies shrouded in almost complete obscurity. In the absence of facts, however, the above reasoning appears to be resonable."1

1 W.H.T. Gairdner, Oriental Hymn Tunes: Egyptian and Syrian, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1930, p. 15.