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1From Euripides to Koukouzeles and Back: A Survey of Greek Musical Culture from Antiquity to Late Byzantine Times 1 Andrew Walker White, University of Maryland, College Park Given Dr. Puchner’s many contributions to the scholarship of theatre and drama in Byzantium, I wanted to pay my respects by offering a small paper on one of the least explored aspects of ancient drama: its music. A number of recent studies in English have succeeded in making Ancient Greek music more accessible,2 and it has become increasingly clear that the principles of melodic composition, much like those of spoken, Attic Greek, remained in continuous use until the Fall of Constantinople and beyond. The music of the Great Dionysia remains a puzzle for most theatre historians; likewise, western musicologists are still coming to grips with the Ancient Greek roots of Orthodox chant. Accordingly, the present study will attempt to look at these seemingly distinct eras, Antiquity and Byzantium, with the goal of illuminating both ends of this historical spectrum and give a brief account of the changes in Greek musical culture over two millenia. It is hoped that this small contribution will generate interest among theatre historians and musicologists alike, in creating a more complete historical narrative of Greek music both as a performance art and as a theoretical object. Part 1: Agon and Innovation Two formative influences on the development of Ancient Greek music were the relative geographic isolation of early Greek-speaking communities and the institution of the agon. Ancient musical competitions drew artists from all over the 1 The author would like to thank Dr. Diane Touliatos of the University of Missouri at St. Louis for her assistance in preparing this study. All errors are, of course, the author’s own. 2 See especially Thomas J. Mathiesen, Apollo’s Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1999); Giovanni Comotti, Music in Greek and Roman Culture, trans. Rosaria V. Munson (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); and Martin L. West, Ancient Greek Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). In addition Andrew Barker’s anthology, Greek Musical Writings, 2 vols. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984) has provided translations of many important primary sources.