Documents of Ancient Greek Music (dDAGM): Notes from Classical to Imperial Periods

Database 'Documents of Ancient Greek Music' (dDAGM) 1.1 is a collection of all notes attested in ancient Greek musical documents from the standard edition by Pöhlmann and West. It was created by Dr Tosca A.C. Lynch of the University of Oxford and includes documents marked as belonging to the Classical/Hellenistic (BC) and Imperial (AD) harmonic systems. The database uses custom Greek musical notation fonts designed by Stefan Hagel of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the Classical/Hellenistic harmonic system based on documents marked 'BC' in the database.
• Studying the Imperial harmonic system based on documents marked 'AD' in the database.
• Comparing musical notation and note readings across different historical periods of ancient Greece.
• Conducting historical musicology research using the standard reference edition of ancient Greek musical documents.

Strengths

• Based on the standard scholarly edition 'Documents of Ancient Greek Music' (Pöhlmann and West, 2001).
• Includes all notes attested in the collected ancient Greek musical documents.
• Distinguishes between Classical/Hellenistic (BC) and Imperial (AD) harmonic systems.

Limitations

• The author states the database in its current form is 'not very user-friendly'.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Compiled from the standard edition 'Documents of Ancient Greek Music' (Pöhlmann and West, 2001).

Collection Method

Curated collection of notes from ancient Greek musical documents.

Time Range

Covers Classical/Hellenistic (BC) and Imperial (AD) periods of ancient Greece.

Geography

Ancient Greece