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older. The suspected increase in licentiousness has been connected with the fact that in the early centuries of our era the Greek verbal accent was gradually changing its nature and becoming a stress accent.21 However, it continued to have a tonal element for a long time: the old relationship between accent and melody still generally holds in the imperial acclamations of the fifteenth-century Byzantine empire.22 |
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An interesting departure from the usual rules is common to two of our texts which in other respects too show a certain likeness, the Seikilos epitaph and the anonymous invocation of the Muse (15, 16). They both begin with a bold rising fifth, starting from the tonic, and quite contrary to the accent, which is on the first syllable. Evidently the rising fifth was a conventional opening gesture which overrode accentual considerations. Cf. above, p. 193. |
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Another aspect of the interrelationship of words and music is the use of melodic means to underline or enhance the sense of particular words or phrases. In Pindar, Bacchylides, and tragedy it is sometimes observable that a word or phrase in one strophe is echoed by the same or similar-sounding words at the corresponding place in another. In such cases there must have been some association with a particular musical phrase, but we can only guess how far it had an expressive function. |
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The intention is clearer, perhaps, in Simonides' and Pindar's occasional placing of a significant word in a rhythmically prominent position where the length of its syllables is exaggerated. If I may attempt to render the effect in translation: |
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(On the impermanence of fortune)
Not even the delicate-winged house-fly
changes perch so fast. |
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(On the foolish boasting of Cleobulus)
against the perennial flow of the rivers, flowers of spring,
the flame of the sun, the gold of the moon
and swirl of the sea
pitting the strength of a mere tombstone. |
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21 T. Reinach, La Musique grecque, 69: Pöhlmann, Griechische Musikfragmente, 28f. For the metrical evidence of the change see my Greek Metre, 162-4. |
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22 See E. Wellesz, A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography, 2nd edn., 114-22. |
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