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according to a set programme. Our sources do state that the piece was structured in five sections, which had names. They do not altogether agree on the details, but in the version of Pollux the sections are: |
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1. Peira, 'trying out',51 in which Apollo surveys the ground to see if it is suitable for the struggle. |
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2. Katakeleusmos, 'call of command', in which he challenges the serpent. |
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3. Iambikon, in which he fights. This part includes trumpet-like notes and 'tooth action'52 to represent the shot serpent gnashing its teeth. |
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4. Spondeion, the stately libation music symbolizing the god's victory. |
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5. Katachoreusis, a joyful dance of celebration. |
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Other authorities refer to the syringes or syrigmos, in which the aulos device called the syrinx was used to imitate the hisses of the expiring snake.53 The performer clearly had to be a virtuoso, able to deploy |
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51 The name suggests something simple and tentative. Pollux also gives it as the name of something auletes learn at the elementary stage (4. 83). The similar anapeira seems to have been a technical term for the introductions of aulos 'sonatas' generally. cf. ps.-Plut. De mus. 1143c. Hesychius defines it as an auletic rhythm. and we hear of auletes using 'dactylic' rhythm in prefatory sections (schol. Ar. Nub. 651: Suda iii 43. 16). |
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52 A special playing technique. also mentioned in Poll. 4.80 and Hsch., in which 'the tongue (= reed?) is pushed against the tooth'. |
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53 Poll. 4. 84, Strab. 9. 3. 10 pp. 421-2, Hypothesis in Pind. Pyth. p. 2. 10ff. Dr., cf. Xen. Symp. 6. 5 and above. p. 102; for Sakadas, Paus. 2. 22. 8-9, 10. 7. 4. ps.-Plut. De mus. 1134a, Poll. 4. 78. As an analogy in Western music one might refer to Johann Kuhnau's Musicalische Vorstellung einiger biblischer Historien, a set of six keyboard sonatas published in 1700. and especially to the first of them, which represents David's fight with Goliath. The various sections bear subtitles indicating the successive phases of the action: 'Le bravate di Goliath'; 'Il tremore degl' Israeliti alla comparsa del Gigante, e la loro preghiera fatta a Dio', and so on to the fall of Goliath, the flight of the Philistines, the joy of the Israelites, the women's concert in David's honour, and 'Il Giubilo comune, ed i balli d' allegrezza del Populo'. Kuhnau's preface does not suggest that he was conscious of the Greek parallel. A dramatic intermezzo on the Apollo-serpent story had been presented among the wedding festivities for the Grand Duke Ferdinando de' Medici and Christine of Lorraine in 1589, and it counts among the antecedents of Italian opera. But Kuhnau, in his use of purely instrumental means to portray a legendary battle stage by stage, is Sakadas' true counterpart.
R. Lachmann in the Festschrifi für Johannes Wolf (Berlin, 1929), 97-106, describes what appears to be a remarkable Mediterranean relic of the Pythikos nomos (or possibly of an oriental antecedent): a five-sectioned flute piece, performed by a Tunisian Bedouin with a good deal of graphic gesture and mime, representing the defeat of a lion. Like the Greek nomos, it included a battle fanfare and ended with a dance of joy. |
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