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between the metrical precision of educated composers and the greater flexibility and tolerance of popular music, at least in this rhythmical genus. |
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In all the rhythms considered so far, the short notesapart from those obtained by dividing long notes in twooccur either singly (iambic, trochaic, paeonic, dochmiac) or in pairs (dactylic, anapaestic, ionic). Where both singles and doubles appear, it is as a result of some inversion with respect to the prototype, such as gives us the choriamb in iambic rhythm and the anacreontic in ionic. The aeolic category, on the other hand, is characterized from the start, one may almost say defined, by the coexistence of single and paired short notes.51 |
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These appear most frequently in certain stereotyped patterns that recur through the centuries, usually clearly marked off as self-contained verses in a stanza or larger melodic structure. The most familiar is the 'glyconic', which presents the metrical scheme  or sometimes  or  . Associated with it, often closing a series, is the pherecratean,  . Other types commonly found have one syllable less at the beginning, and/or one more at the end ( ). |
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How are we to interpret such sequences in terms of musical rhythm? First we must take note of the curious fact that several of these aeolic verses, as they appear in Sappho and Alcaeus, begin with two metrical positions of indifferent quantity: they may be both long, or both short, or one of each. This is a degree of freedom unknown in any other Greek metre. Normally any positions in a verse that do not have a fixed and definite length are separated by at least three that do. However, comparison with the metres of the Rgveda and of other Indo-European traditions indicates that the freedom at the beginning of the aeolic verses is a relic from a very ancient type of song in which, while the number of syllables (notes) in each line was fixed, it was only towards the end of the line that a particular pattern of long and short notes was imposed on them.52 |
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51 The use of the term 'aeolic' with this denotation is modern: such rhythms are frequent in the Aeolian poets Sappho and Alcaeus. but they were in common use throughout the Classical and Hellenistic periods. |
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52 A. Meillet, Les Origines indo-européennes des mètres grees (Paris, 1923): M. L. West, Glotta 51 (1973). 161-87; Greek Metre, 2-4. |
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