Nearly all the words associated with the classical music world come from the ancient Greek language, with a few Roman terms thrown in.
In the days of ancient Greece, the earliest form of drama was a series of odes, sung and danced by a chorus directly in front of the stage. This area became known as the orchestra, from the Greek ‘to dance’ which in turn came from orkheisthai ‘to dance’ and tra denoting ‘place’.
When the Romans later adopted the Greek drama, the space known as the orchestra was taken over by the musicians who had previously been on a balcony above and the dancing chorus was no longer used but was still called orchestra. Orchestra now refers to a group of musicians.
A relative of orchestra is the Japanese word karaoke, the amateur singalong entertainment which is made up from the Japanese kara ‘empty’ and oke, an abbreviation of okesutora, a Japanese version of the English word orchestra.
Symphony, meaning a musical composition for an orchestra, comes from the Greek syn ‘together’ and phone ‘sound’ so a harmony of sounds.
The words violin and fiddle probably come from the Latin vitularia ‘celebrate joyfully’ which in turn comes from the name and character of Vitula, the Roman Goddess of Exaltation or Victory. The word was adopted in German as fiedel, Dutch vedel and the English fiddle.
However, it’s disturbing to think that it also stems from a word meaning a device used to torture slaves. It’s probably the string connection, because the fidicula was a small lyre and was also part of an assembly
of ropes used to stretch victims on the rack.
Harmony comes from the Greek harmonia ‘concord of sounds’ and is literally ‘a means of joining’, related to harmos ‘joint, shoulder’ from the idea of fitting together.
The most musical word of all, music, comes from the Greek Muses. There were nine of them, all goddesses and reputedly daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne and were considered to each represent a branch of poetry, the arts and science. They sometimes crop up in our crosswords, especially Erato, Muse of love poetry and Clio, Muse of history.
Happy Puzzling!
Inspector Clueso. April BIG Lefties Big 5. 118 down should read “boxes” plural
Hi Fiona
We’ve passed your gremlin report to our editorial teal who will be in touch. Thanks for keeping us on our toes!
Thanks, Fiona. You are absolutely correct. The answer is CHESTS and so the clue should be plural. For your future information, you will find a Gremlin-report form on our site by going to Magazine Updates and then to Gremlins. You can check if an error has already been reported in any of our magazines or put in a report of a suspected error.
Thanks again for letting us know about this typo.