|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Pythian festival at Delphi. But the first half of the sixth century saw a significant increase in the range and frequency of these opportunities. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In 586 BC the Pythian festival was reorganized on a grander scale, with the institution of athletic and additional musical contests. It had previously been held only every eight years: from now on it was to be every four. The new musical events were for aulodes and auletes. The victorious aulode in 586 was an Arcadian called Echembrotus. His prize was a tripod cauldron, and according to the dedicatory inscription he won it for singing 'songs and elegoi', probably a form of lament for the dead.34 The aulodic contest was then apparently discontinued. Pausanias supposes the reason to have been that laments were considered too gloomy and inauspicious, but this cannot be the true explanation. There was plenty of scope for cheerful aulody. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The contest for solo auletes was vastly more successful. It continued for many centuries and was acknowledged as the most prestigious of its kind anywhere. The winner in 586, as in the two succeeding contests in 582 and 578, was Sakadas of Argos. What he played was an extended composition, the Pythikos nomos, portraying in music the story of Apollo's fight with the serpent. It became a traditional repertory piece.35 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sakadas may possibly have made improvements in the aulos itself, seeing that there was a type of instrument named after him.36 In any case, his performance at Delphi is the first we hear of the aulos as a virtuoso instrument. Its development in this capacity evidently prompted kithara-players to explore the potentialities of their instrument and to see what they could achieve using it not just as an accompaniment to fine singing or dancing but as a musical voice on its own. In 558 unaccompanied kithara-playing was added to the Pythian programme.37 The first victor is named as Agelaus of Tegea. Aristonicus of Argos, the man said to have first developed the art, may perhaps have been active about this time, though our source puts him back as far as the age of Archilochus.38 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Meanwhile, in about 566, the Panathenaea at Athens had also |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
34 Strab. 9. 3. 10, Paus. 10. 7. 4-6, schol. Pind. Pyth. argum.; on the chronology, K. Brodersen, ZPE 82 (1990), 25-31. See my Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus, 5-7. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
35 See the fuller discussion on pp. 212-14. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
36 See p. 90 n. 42. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
37 See p. 214. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
38 Menaechmus, FGrH 131 F 5. |
|
|
|
|
|