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A Peripatetic writer discusses the question why choruses in tragedy do not sing in either Hypodorian or Hypophrygian. His answer is that these modes are more suited to the heroic figures on the stage; Hypodorian is grand and steady (we have seen Dorian described in similar terms), and accordingly the most 'citharodic' of modes, while Hypophrygian is appropriate to action.94 It may have been from citharodes that Heraclides heard Lasus' 'Aeolian' hymn sung in Hypodorian. Provided that the melody was the original one, his inference seems sound: that the old Aeolian mode was, if not identical with the later Hypodorian in its principles and ambitus, at any rate similar enough to be so interpreted. |
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Another mode mentioned in early poetry, but unfamiliar later, was the Locrian. It is said to have been invented by Xenocritus, a composer of narrative songs from Locri on the toe of Italy, and to have been still in use in the time of Simonides and Pindar.95 In the harmonic handbooks of the Aristoxenian tradition it is equated with Hypodorian, just as the Aeolian mode was by Heraclides, and presumably for a similar reason: some piece by Simonides or Pindar, in which the mode appeared to be specified as Locrian, was heard sung in a mode identified as Hypodorian.96 |
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Such is the evidence for the modes as regards the Classical period.97 It suffices to confirm what we should have expected in any case, that modes were not fixed and unchanging for all time. There was evolution and modification. Old ones were discarded, new ones grew. |
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Mode in the post-Classical era |
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So what happened after Plato and Heraclides? The development of theoretical analysis, which ought to illuminate the picture, in fact |
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94 Ps.-Arist. Pr. 19. 48. The author is able to cite the use of Hypophrygian in a scene of action in a recent play (cf. TrGF 127 F 3). Proclus couples it with Phrygian as proper to the dithyramb (ap. Phot. Bibl. 320b). Psellus, De trag. 5, says that both Hypodorian and Hypophrygian were dithyrambic, and that Agathon first made use of them in tragedy. The inflammatory Phrygian piping in the story about Pythagoras becomes Hypophrygian in Boethius' version, Inst. Mus. 1. 1 pp. 184f. Friedl. |
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95 Pind. fr. 104b, Callim. fr. 669, schol. Pind. Ol. 10. 18b, Ath. 625e, Poll. 4. 65 (where 'Philoxenus' must be an error for Xenocritus). |
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96 Cleon. p. 198. 13, Bacchius p. 309. 9, Gaud. p. 347. 10. |
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97 The Boeotian harmonia mentioned in schol. Ar. Eq. 989 (cf. schol. Ach. 14) is probably a mis-categorization of the 'Boeotian nomos' (Soph. fr. 966, Poll. 4.65, intended by Ar. Ach. loc. cit.). Clement's mention of a Mixophrygian mode (Strom. 1. 76. 6) is isolated and probably a mistake. The Pamphylian mode or key referred to in Philostr. VA 1. 30 is as fictitious as the poetess, a rival of Sappho's, who is supposed to have used it. |
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