|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
(Come forth, ye (Muses) that were allotted deep-forested Helicon, loud-booming Zeus' fair-armed daughters: come to celebrate your brother in songs. Phoebus of the golden hair, that over the twin peaks of this crag of Parnassus, accompanied by the famous maidens of Delphi, comes to the waters of the fair-flowing Castalian spring as he attends to the mountain oracle.) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The rhythm is paeonic throughout (see p. 141). At first the melody circles about the tonic a, with which it probably started. It rises up to b and c' (if not further), and several times dips to f, omitting g in the pentatonic manner. At melpsete the compass widens with a dramatic drop from a to c. The relationship of this new note is established by the figure c e f c, which forms a cadence at chryseokoman: we now have a complete pentatonic scale, c e f a b c'. The next words repeat the c e f sequence an octave higher, thus extending the scale up to e' and f'. It is no accident that this high passage introduces mention of Parnassus with its twin peaks, and that it has two peaks itself. Then successive descending thirds at Parnassidos tasde bring us back to the tonic a. The melody proceeds in the original zone for a few bars, but at Kastalidos climbs again, this time diatonically through d' to the 'dominant' e' and its subordinate f'. Progress is mainly stepwise and undulating. At epinisetai comes a plangent modulation, from the d' of the disjunct tetrachord b c' d' e' into a descending conjunct one, d' (c')  (a); the disturbing  is fittingly used in the half-cadence, marking a pause that demands a continuation. The last line |
|
|
|
|
|
