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It is difficult to find parallels for this sort of thing in the post-Hellenistic fragments. |
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What we do find there is a growing tendency to ornamental division of notes, so that an increasing number of long syllables are sung on two or three notes (never more), and even some short syllables are sung on two. To borrow from the terminology applied to plain-chant, there is a shift from syllabic to neumatic style, with premonitions of the melismatic.27 |
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In traditional Greek vocal music the binary opposition of long and short syllables was matched by a binary opposition of long and short notes. Within certain limits a long syllable might take the place of two short ones, or vice versa. It is reasonable to imagine that, corresponding to this equivalence, it was sometimes acceptable to set a long syllable to two short notes. (The alternative would be to suppose that all pairs of short syllables that were capable of being replaced by one long were sung on the same note.) Certainly in the late fifth century melodic bisection of long syllables was commonplace. In the fragment from Euripides' Orestes one instance is directly visible, and if we calculate the number of letters written in the broken-off portions of the lines, we discover that at least three other double-vowel spellings are probable. In this short sample it seems that about one long syllable in six was divided between two notes. |
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In the Delphic Paeans the proportion is one in three or four, but the principle is the same. We cannot necessarily take these pieces as representative of Hellenistic technique generally. There must have been much variation between different composers and genres. In Mesomedes the frequency of division is much lower. |
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In Mesomedes, the anonymous invocation of the Muse, and the Seikilos epitaph we get our first evidence concerning the melodization of triseme syllables. Logically they should be allocable to three short notes just as readily as ordinary disemes are to two. And indeed we find this,  besides  . and  ; not, however,  , even where that is the underlying metre.28 There is no reason why this should not correspond to classical practice. |
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In the papyri from the second and third centuries AD we encounter a more florid technique. Apart from a generally higher frequency of divided longs, there are three distinctive features: |
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27 Neumatic, in this usage, means from two to four notes to a syllable; melismatic means five or more. |
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28 See the section on Mesomedes in Ch. 10. |
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