Why is the Oldest Book in Europe a Work of Music Criticism? (Part 1 of 2)

[ed. Part 2 here.]

Greek workers were simply trying to widen the road from Thessaloniki to Kavala. On January 15, 1962, the work crew had arrived at Derveni, a narrow pass six miles north of Thessaloniki in present-day North Macedonia, where they stumbled upon an old necropolis.

They didn’t know it at the time, but they had discovered a burial ground near the ancient city of Lete. Judging by the weapons, armor, and precious items, it had served as a gravesite for affluent families with soldiering backgrounds.

Here among the remnants of a funeral pyre on top of a slab covering one of the graves, they found a carbonized papyrus. Experts later determined that this manuscript was, in the words of classicist Richard Janko, “the oldest surviving European book.”

The discovery of any ancient papyrus in Greece would be a matter for celebration. Due to the hot, humid weather, these documents have not survived into modern times. In this case, a mere accident led to the preservation of the Derveni papyrus—the intention must have been to destroy it in the funeral pyre. The papyrus had probably been placed in the hands of the deceased before cremation, but instead of burning, much of it had been preserved by the resulting carbonization.

Mere happenstance, it seems, allowed the survival of a document literally consigned to the flames. And what was in this astonishing work, a text so important that its owner wanted to carry it with him to the afterlife?

Strange to say, it was a book of music criticism. (...)

But if this is an amazing kind of musicology, it’s also an embarrassment. Maybe that’s why I’ve never heard a single musicologist mention the Derveni papyrus—although it is arguably the original source in the Western world of their own academic specialty. Things aren't much better in the various academic disciplines of ancient studies, built largely on celebrating the rational and literary achievements of the distant past. For classicists, the claims presented in this papyrus are awkward from almost every angle.

The Derveni author was clearly smart and educated, a seer among the ranks of magi, but hardly operating from the same playbook as Plato and Aristotle—those paragons of logic and clear thinking. At first glance, this sage seems more like those roadside psychics working out of low-rent strip malls, who tell your future and bill twenty-five dollars to your credit card.

But this magical mumbo-jumbo was just a start of the many controversies surrounding the Derveni papyrus. As subsequent events proved, almost every aspect of this ancient text would be scrutinized, disputed, and—most of all—cleansed in an attempt to make it seem less like wizardry, and more like the scripture of an organized religion, perhaps similar to the teachings of a sober Protestant sect, or the tenets of a formal philosophy, similar to those taught in respectable universities.

We will need to sort out a few of these troubling issues, which have considerable bearings on our understanding of the origins of music, and even its potential uses in our own times. But before proceeding, I must point out a disturbing pattern I’ve noticed over the course of decades studying the sources of musical innovation: namely, that many of the most important surviving documents were preserved only by chance, and frequently were intended for destruction—and, when they have survived, they have frequently been subjected to purifying distortions of the same kind involved here.

In fact, it’s surprising how often musical innovators are completely obliterated from the historical record. And if you pay attention you notice something eerie and unsettling: the more powerful the music, the more the innovators risk erasure. We are told that Buddy Bolden was the originator of jazz—but not a single recording survives (or perhaps was ever made). W.C. Handy is lauded as the “Father of the Blues,” but by his own admission he didn’t invent the music, but learned it from a mysterious African-American guitarist who performed at the train station in Tutwiler, Mississippi. In that instance, not only did no recordings survive, but we don’t even know the Tutwiler guitarist’s name.

Even the venerated genres of Western classical music originate from these same shadowy places. Only a few musical fragments survive from the score of the first opera, Jacopo Peri’s Dafne; and Angelo Poliziano’s Orfeo, an earlier work that laid the groundwork for the art form, is even more enigmatic. Not only has none of its music survived, but we aren’t entirely sure of the year it was staged, the makeup of the orchestra, or the names of the musicians who might have assisted Poliziano in the creation of the work. Yet such mysteries are hardly exceptions but rather the norm in the long history of musical innovation, so murky and imprecise and resisting the neat timelines we find in other fields of human endeavor.

Inventors and innovators in math, science, and technology are remembered by posterity, but for some reason the opposite is true in music. If you are a great visionary in music, your life is actually at danger (as we shall see below). But, at a minimum, your achievement is removed from the history books. If you think I’m exaggerating, convene a group of music historians and ask them to name the inventor of the fugue, the sonata, the symphony, or any other towering achievement of musical culture, and note the looks of consternation that ensue, even before the arguments begin.  (...)

We can trace this story of musical destruction all the way to the present day, and share accounts of parents and other authority figures literally burning recordings of rock, blues, hip-hop, metal, and other styles of disruptive music—songs possessing an alluring power over hearers almost identical to what Plato warned against back in ancient Greece. In 1979 the demolition of a box of disco records with explosives—as part of a publicity stunt to get fans to attend a Chicago White Sox baseball double-header—turned into a full-fledged riot, with 39 people arrested. Some people will tell you that the age of disco music ended because of that incident. But the destruction didn’t stop there. Just a few years ago, a minor league baseball team attracted a crowd by blowing up Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus’s music and merchandise in a giant (and aptly-named) boombox. In fact, you could write a whole book about people burning and blowing up music.

But why do we destroy music? In the pages ahead, I will suggest that songs have always played a special role in defining the counterculture and serving as a pathway to experiences outside accepted norms. They are not mere entertainment, as many will have you believe, but exist as an entry point to an alternative universe immune to conventional views and acceptable notions. As such, songs still possess magical power as a gateway on a life-changing quest. And though we may have stopped burning witches at the stake, we still fear their sorcery, and consign to the flames those devilish songs that contain it.

by Ted Gioia, The Honest Broker |  Read more:

Images: Wikimedia Commons; Buddy Bolden/uncredited

[ed. After a disastrous week in which a good chunk of posts on this blog were lost, I'd like to return with Ted Gioia and the first installment from his new book Music to Raise the Dead (The Secret Origins of Musicology). The plan is to release one chapter a month on his website The Honest Broker. Part 2 is here. Ted is a treasure (as a music critic, historian, and all-around interesting and knowledgeable guy), and if you're not familiar with him, or only vaguely so, I urge you to check out all his posts (including this one about effective public speaking). He also has a number of YouTube videos on various music subjects as well (for example, here, here and here).]