|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2687 we hear that the orthios or the marked trochee might be realized as (6/8 + 12/8)  or as (9/8)  .72 The exact interpretation of the passage is somewhat uncertain, but the point is evidently that the terms orthios and marked trochee were applicable where rhythmic cells were organized in threes to make a higher unity with a single down-beat. In modern terms they would correspond to the longer bars in triple time. The dactylo-epitrite segments described above as bars in 3/2 rhythm,  , might presumably qualify as a 'marked trochee'. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The writer goes on to say that a paeon might be made up analogously from five-syllable groups. This connects with a statement by Michael Psellus, who was drawing on a lost section of Aristoxenus' work, that the paeonic type of foot could be expanded up to the total duration of twenty-five shorts.73 In other words, an assembly of notes as large as  could be encompassed in the five-beat scheme  .74 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
What is involved in all these cases is a relatively slow beat, but not at all a slow musical tempo. On the contrary, it was with a reasonably brisk tempo that the shorter note-groups were most likely to be felt as constituents of larger groupings. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The ethos of different rhythms |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Greek composer's choice of rhythms was to some extent limited, if not determined, by the current conventions of the particular tradition or genre in which he was working. To the extent that he had freedom of choice, he might have exercised it on more than one principle. He might have been influenced by some other music that happened to be running in his head, or by the shape of the words that presented themselves most readily to his mind, or by his own established habits. But sometimes, certainly, he must have chosen a rhythm for the particular mood or effect that it was suited to convey. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From the time of the sophists there existed a body of doctrine on |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
72 Col. iii 30-iv 1. cf. Pearson 41, 82f. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
73Preliminaries to the Science of Rhythm 12 (Pearson 24). cf. Excerpta Neapol. 14 (Pearson 30), Aristid. Quint. p. 34. 10. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
74 The comic poet Theopompus used such paeonic pentameters. as the metricians called them, in his Boys (fr. 39), and Hephaestion says they bore the name Theopompeion because of it. |
|
|
|
|
|