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What Song the Sirens Sang: Problems and Conjectures in Ancient Greek Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Extract

‘What Song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzling Questions are not beyond all conjecture.’ Across three centuries, this comment by Sir Thomas Browne (ed. Keynes 1964, 1:165) offers a measure of comfort to students of the music of Greek antiquity. The measure is necessarily a modest one: in fixing upon the term ‘conjecture’, he chose better than he knew.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1979

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