|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Lasus is credited with the introduction of dithyrambic competitions; it is assumed that this means their institution at Athens, which is dated c. 508, a few years after the assassination of Lasus' patron Hipparchus.62 He composed dithyrambs himself, and |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
by adapting his rhythms to the tempo of the dithyramb, and using a larger number of scattered notes, in accordance with the abundance of sounds that auloi have, he changed the older music into something new.63 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This is not as clear an account as we could wish, but it suggests a busier style of vocal music than had been customary, with more rapid and varied movement of the melodic line, perhaps in imitation of auletic solo music as it had evolved in the Argolid since Sakadas. Pindar alludes repeatedly to the multiplicity of the aulos' sounds.64 It is possible that the division of the semitone into quarter-tones in the enharmonic genus, a development most naturally derived from auletic part-stopping, was introduced to vocal music by Lasus, particularly as his doctrine of notes having breadth in the scale suggests interest in Epigonus' investigation of minimal intervals. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The new kind of dithyramb was controversial, as innovation in music usually is. Pratinas of Phlius, a musician and dramatist active at Athens from sometime before 500, composed a dance-song perhaps a dithyrambin which the chorus protested at a riotous, rhythmically complex style of dancing that had arrived at Dionysus' altar; the aulos, instead of being subservient to the voice, was now calling the tune, babbling away in deep, toad-like intricacies. Pratinas sought to reassert a more conventional 'Dorian' style.65 Pindar, on the other hand, begins a dithyramb written for performance at Thebes thus:66 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Formerly the dithyrambic song proceeded
drawn out like a rope,
and from men's mouths the false-sounding 's'. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
62 Schol. Pind. Ol. 13. 26b, schol. Ar. Av. 1403, Suda iii. 207. 27, 236. 26; Marm. Par. FGrH 239 A 46 with Jacoby's comment. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
63 Ps.-Plut. De mus. 1141c. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
64 See below, p. 346. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
65PMG 708 = TrGF 4 F 3. The toad metaphor is probably the earliest attested instance of a commonplace of modern music critics, likening unfamiliar sonorities to animal noises; a number of examples are quoted by N. Slonimsky, Lexicon of Musical Invective, 9f. There is no real basis for the idea that phryneou 'toad' plays derisively on the name of Phrynichus or Phrynis. Pratinas elsewhere shows interest in musical history, and in the propriety of different modes, including Lasus' Aeolian. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
66 Fr. 70b. |
|
|
|
|
|