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a career peak of at least twenty-five years is indicated. Many accomplishments were set to his credit: increasing the number of the lyre's strings from four to seven; inventing the barbitos; organizing musical institutions at Sparta for the first time; composing the first citharodic nomoi and establishing their formal structural divisions; inventing drinking songs; extending the scale from a seventh to an octave by using the 'Dorian' Nete, a fifth above Mese; introducing the Mixolydian mode, and the slow measures called orthios and 'marked trochee'; composing a set of citharodic prooimia with which to preface melodic arrangements of Homeric and other verse.6 |
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Much of this was no doubt constructed by projecting Classical citharodes' practices and repertory back upon the first famous citharode to be remembered. But Terpander must have been an exceptionally gifted musician, and it is likely enough that he made some technical and artistic innovations. It cannot be literally true that he was personally responsible for increasing the kithara's strings to seven. But he may well have been the first to win wide acclaim with the seven-stringed instrument and with a new, less monotonous style of epic singing, in which a wider melodic compass and more different notes were used.7 |
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Kepion is a much less famous figure. But besides giving his name to a citharodic nomos, he is associated with the establishment of the kithara's (classical) form, which is put in his time.8 He is called a pupil of Terpander's. This, however, is a standard ancient way of linking up persons who were successively important in a given field of endeavour, and the information should be treated guardedly. |
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The aulos is first attested at the end of the eighth century. From at least the fifth century the Greeks believed that they owed the introduction of aulos music to a Phrygian or Mysian piper called Olympus, a semi-legendary figure who had learned his art from the satyr Marsyas. Another Phrygian, Hyagnis or Agnis, was held to |
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6 The sources for all this are conveniently collected by D. A. Campbell in the Loeb Greek Lyric ii (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 294ff. |
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7 Cf. CQ 21 (1971), 307-9; JHS 101 (1981), 113f., 116; ZPE 73 (1986), 44-6. |
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8 Ps.-Plut. De mus. 1132d, 1133c. See p. 53. The second passage continues: 'And it (the kithara) was called Asiatic, because the Lesbian citharodes, living close to Asia, used it. And lastly they say that the citharode Perikleitos, a native of Lesbos, won the Karneia at Sparta. With his death the unbroken succession of Lesbian citharodes came to an end. This must surely come from Hellanicus' work on Karneian victors, in which he celebrated the successes of his native Lesbos (see FGrH 4 F 85). Kepion perhaps belongs in the Lesbian series. |
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