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42 Same papyrus, 16-19: dramatic lament
(Original a semitone lower) |
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(With suicidal hand and . . . your sword, Ajax son of Telamon . . . because of Odysseus, the villain . . . wounds, he whom we miss . . .) |
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This piece is unique among our specimens of vocal music (with the doubtful exception of 44) in being set in the register of a female voice. The singer presumably represents Ajax's mistress Tecmessa, or else it is a female chorus.12 The metre is dactylo-epitrite, and the melody pays no attention to word accent, which implies a strophic composition. These features suggest that the text is taken from a play of late Classical or Hellenistic date, in which the lament was either sung by the chorus or by Tecmessa in alternation with the chorus.13 The music, however, looks much later, especially in view of the melisma on Aian, which distorts the original rhythm by protracting the first syllable to twice its proper length. The absence of tetrachordal structure in the scale used is also against an early date. And originally all female parts would have been played by male actors, with their songs therefore in the normal register (as in 3, 4). It seems therefore that in the Imperial period a new setting of an emotional |
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12The piece is preceded in the papyrus by the abbreviations  which mean 'another item' and perhaps 'choral'. |
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13 A lament not involving the chorus would have been unlikely to be strophic. Dactylo-epitrite began to be used in drama about 450 BC; it was very popular down to the 3rd C. BC, but not later. We know of Ajax plays by several 4th-c. tragedians: Astydamas the younger, Carcinus the younger, and Theodectas. Cf. Trag. Adesp. 110, 438b. |
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