The ''Anonymus Bellermanni'' is a collection of material on music, by one or more unknown authors, transmitted in a number of Byzantine manuscripts and first published by in 1841. Martin West comments: "It is drawn to a marked extent from

Aristoxenus Aristoxenus of Tarentum (; born 375, fl. 335 BC) was a Ancient Greece, Greek Peripatetic school, Peripatetic philosopher, and a pupil of Aristotle. Most of his writings, which dealt with philosophy, ethics and music, have been lost, but one musi ...

and

Aristides Quintilianus Aristides Quintilianus (Greek: Ἀριστείδης Κοϊντιλιανός) was the Greek author of an ancient musical treatise, ''Perì Musikês'' (Περὶ Μουσικῆς, i.e. ''On Music''; Latin: ''De Musica'') According to Theodore Kar ...

but contains some valuable matter not found elsewhere, including half a dozen little instrumental tunes and exercises." Along with four poems attributed to

Mesomedes Mesomedes of Crete () was a Greek citharode and Greek lyric poet, lyric poet and composer of the early 2nd century AD in Roman Greece. Prior to the discovery of the Seikilos epitaph in the late 19th century, the hymns of Mesomedes were the only s ...

, and not counting various fragments on papyrus, it is one of the only examples where a piece of ancient Greek music has survived in the manuscript tradition. The six short fragments of music are in an appendix to the document. Two of these are very short, and one is an ascending and descending octave scale. They are notated in the type of notation used for instrumental music, and appear to have been designed for people learning to play, almost certainly on the double pipe known as an

aulos An ''aulos'' (plural ''auloi''; , plural ) or ''tibia'' (Latin) was a wind instrument in ancient Greece, often depicted in art and also attested by archaeology. Though the word ''aulos'' is often translated as "flute" or as " double flute", ...

. Among other things, the document explains the symbols used in music for notes which are extended to two, three, four, and five time-units (disemes, trisemes, tetrasemes, and pentasemes). The last two are not attested except in the ''Anonymus Bellermanni''. Other symbols mentioned in the treatise are the symbol for a musical rest (shaped Λ), and the ''stigmai'' or dots above the note-symbols, which apparently indicate the

arsis Arsis is an American death metal band from Virginia Beach, Virginia, formed in 2000. The band is currently signed to Nuclear Blast. History Demos and Willowtip era (2000–2006) Arsis was started by James Malone and Michael "Mike" Van Dyn ...

of the foot. Examples of such stigmai are also found in the

Seikilos epitaph The Seikilos epitaph is an Ancient Greek inscription that preserves the oldest surviving complete musical composition, including musical notation. Commonly dated between the 1st and 2nd century AD, the inscription was found engraved on a pilla ...

and elsewhere. The six different musical examples are of different levels of rhythmic complexity. §100 (headed ''tetrasēmos'') has bars of four time-units; §97 and §104 contain bars of 6 time-units (''hexasēmos''); §98 and §99 have eleven and twelve time-units in each bar; §101 is headed "of eight time-units" (''oktasēmos'') in the manuscript, but judging from the music which follows, this was plausibly emended to "of eighteen time-units" (''oktōkaidekasēmos'') by E. Pöhlmann.Hagel (2008), p. 130.

Notes

Sources *Hagel, Stefan (2008)
"Ancient Greek Rhythm: The Bellermann Exercises"
''Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica'', New Series, Vol. 88, No. 1 (2008), pp. 125–138.

Notes

Further reading