Front matter

TERPANDER

TERPANDER or MUSIC AND THE FUTURE

BY

EDWARD J. DENT

New York E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 Fifth Avenue

Published, 1927 By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

All rights reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

All ancient writers who mention the progressive state of music in Greece, are unanimous in celebrating the talents of TERPANDER. Several writers tell us that he added three strings to the lyre, which before his time had but four. Plutarch, in his “Laconic Institutions,” informs us that Terpander was fined by the Ephori for his innovations. However, in his Dialogue on Music, he likewise tells us that the same musician appeased a sedition at Sparta, among the same people, by the persuasive strains which he sung and played to them upon that occasion. There seems no other way of reconciling these two accounts, than by supposing that he had, by degrees, refined the public taste, or depraved his own to the level of his hearers.—Burney.