What were the two main types of instruments represented in ancient Greece, strings and winds?

Lyre and aulos are the representatives of these two types of instruments

(I) Music and the worship of the gods

The initial history of ancient Greek music was intertwined with the worship of the gods, with myths and all kinds of fantastical legends. Etymologically, "music" is derived from "muse". In Greek mythology, Muse is the nine daughters of the king of the gods and the goddess of memory, Monemosine, a group of goddesses who symbolize nobility, wisdom and holiness, and who are in charge of literature, drama, lyric poetry, music and other noble cultural activities. In ancient Greece, music was often associated with the gods worshipped by the Greeks. The famous gods of Greek mythology, Apollo, Athena, and Dionysus, were all gods of the arts and the earliest creators and practitioners of music in legend. As music is associated with the gods, music itself is also considered full of divinity. Ancient people believed that music could drive away evil spirits and demons to cure diseases, purify the body and soul, and make people noble and good, so music occupied a very important position in the social life of ancient Greece.

(2) Musical Instruments in Ancient Greece

There were two types of musical instruments in Ancient Greece: stringed instruments and wind instruments, and the lyre and the aulos were the representatives of these two types of musical instruments. Legend has it that the lyre and the aulos were invented and owned by different gods, and thus their use was often associated with the worship of different gods. The lira was said to have been granted to Apollo by Zeus, so playing the lira was often associated with the cult of Apollo. The Avros was often used in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine, and this instrument had a harder and more penetrating sound, with a wild and feral power, and was an important instrument used in carnivals and tragic performances.

(C) the prosperity of poetry

Greek musical activities not only existed in the folk religious rituals, in some of the more cultivated cultured people, music in the form of poetry was chanted. Ancient Greek poetry and music were linked, and poetry chanting was always accompanied by music. As early as Homer's time, Asia Minor folk minstrels went around singing narrative verses about mythological heroes, and in the 9th to 8th centuries B.C., Homer, the blind poet, compiled and organized them and wrote the monumental Iliad and Othello, which were the first large-scale epic poems to be recorded in ancient Greece.

Around the 8th to 6th centuries B.C., ancient Greece underwent a social transformation from a primitive clan system to a city-state system. With the disintegration of the clans, the spiritual life of individuals underwent great changes, and people were no longer satisfied with immersing themselves in mythological heroes, but longed for the expression of their own emotions and wills, and thus tree-hugging poems came into being.

Lyric poetry is derived from folk songs, the earliest of which were sung, often accompanied by lire, and the word "lyric" is thus related to lire.

(D) Ancient Greek Drama

Greek drama is an important achievement of Greek civilization, Aeschylus (Aischulos, about 525~456 BC), Sophocles (Sophocles, about 496~406 BC), and Euripides (485~406 BC) are the most famous ancient Greek plays. Euripides and Euripides (about 485~406 B.C.) are the world-famous three great tragedy playwrights of Ancient Greece. Greek drama arose from Greek religious myths, but it has transcended the primitive customs of the folk, and is a reflection of the Greek civilization towards sanity and maturity.

Greek tragedy originated from the folk ode to the god of wine. According to legend, when the god of wine descended to the earth, a half-human, half-goat god of the forest sang along with him, and the Greek word "tragedy" (tragedy) was formed by combining the words "goat" (tragos) and "song" (ode). (ode). In the rituals for the god of wine, people dressed in sheepskins and ivy crowns, with horns and whiskers, sang and danced to the music of the Avros.

Tragedy developed greatly in the 5th century B.C.E. and had an important influence on social life at that time. Because tragedy was seen as an effective way to educate the masses, the government often organized the creation and performance of tragedies directly, paid stipends to the common people to attend the plays, built huge amphitheaters that could hold tens of thousands of people, and held grand theatrical competitions in the spring of each year. In addition to tragedy, comedy also appeared later, depicting and expressing real life in a light-hearted and derisive manner. Greek theater has an important historical significance to the later Western music, the emergence of Western opera in the 17th century, as well as the ideals of Wagner's opera reform in the 19th century were all influenced by ancient Greek drama