Music in Society
In spite of the purported lack of musical originality on the part of the Romans, they did enjoy music greatly and used it for many activities. Scott recounts the obvious military uses of the tuba for signaling, as well as music for funerals, private gatherings, public performances on the stage and large gladiatorial spectacles. Music was also used in religious ceremonies. The Romans cultivated music as a sign of education. Music contests were quite common and attracted a wide range of competition, including Nero himself, who performed widely as an amateur and once traveled to Greece to compete.
There are also numerous references (cited in Scott) to the pervasive presence of music in ancient Rome, music even on a very large scale — hundreds of trumpeters and pipers playing together at massive games and festivals — and even of normally hand-held citharas built as large as carriages.
Read more about this topic: Music Of Ancient Rome
Famous quotes containing the words music in, music and/or society:
“When we are in health, all sounds fife and drum for us; we hear the notes of music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when we awake in the dawn.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“From where Pan’s cavern is
Intolerable music falls.
Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear,
Belly, shoulder, bum,
Flash fishlike; nymphs and satyrs
Copulate in the foam.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“My belief is that no being and no society composed of human beings ever did, or ever will, come to much unless their conduct was governed and guided by the love of some ethical ideal.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)