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12
Historical Synthesis 2. High Noon and Afternoon |
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By the last quarter of the fifth century the progressive music of Lasus and Simonides had become classic; but there was a more acute sense than ever of an opposition between old and new styles. Damon's warning against the dangers of a musical revolution (p. 246) was one influential expression of this feeling. In a fragment of Eupolis someone asks, 'Okay, do you want to hear the present-day pattern of song, or the old style?' One of those addressed answers, 'Give us both, and I'll listen and take whichever I decide.' Songs ancient and modern, with elements of exaggeration and parody, must have followed. In Aristophanes we hear that formerly boys were brought up to sing to the lyre such pieces as Lamprocles' hymn to Athena, |
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maintaining to pitch the attunement handed down by their fathers.
And if any of them played the fool or made any bends
of the kind they do now, these cussed bends à la Phrynis,
he got a good thrashing for doing away with the Muses.1 |
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'Bends' (kampai) are often alluded to at this period as a characteristic of modern music. They are associated with departure from the harmonia, the proper attunement, and it seems likely that they are the same as what are later called metabolai, i.e. modulations.2 |
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Another aspect of the old/new antithesis is the increased number of notes available and the consequent enhancement of melodic |
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1 Eup. fr. 326, Ar. Nub. 966-72. 'The Muses' here stand for the true notes; cf. p. 224. |
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2 See especially Pherecr. fr. 155. 9, 15 f., 26-8: also Ar Nub. 333 (with schol.), Thesm. 53, 68, fr. 753, Eup. fr. 366, Timoth. PMG 802, Poll. 4. 67, 73. Probably not with this sense in Pind. fr. 107 a. 3, nor in Telestes, PMG 808.4. In another Aristo-phanic passage (fr. 930) departure from the harmonia is called 'playing the Chian or Siphnian'; according to the 4th-c. writer Praxidamas, the allusion was to Democritus of Chios and Theoxenides of Siphnos and their use of the chromatic genus. |
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