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The citharode Phrynis appears after Cinesias in Pherecrates' account, but he must have been rather older, probably older than Melanippides. He followed Aristoclides in the proud line of Lesbian citharodes going back to Terpander. He won his first victory in the Panathenaic contest in (probably) 446.15 He is said to have increased the number of kithara-strings from seven to nine, developed a style of performance characterized by harmonic modulation and rhythmic variety, and created a new kind of nomos that combined dactylic hexameters with passages in free form, older citharodes' nomoi having been simply melodic schemes for singing verse of stereotyped forms such as hexameters or elegiacs.16 The increase to nine strings is plausible, though the literary and artistic evidence on the subject is conflicting.17 It was suggested earlier that Lasus had introduced the form of enharmonic with divided semitonesthe form that gave the Dorian and Phrygian scales nine notes (as in the Damonian list) instead of sevenand that Pindar's choruses sang in this style while the citharist could still only play seven notes. The construction of a nine-stringed kithara was an obvious next step. |
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Pherecrates' lines on Phrynis are not easy to understand: |
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Phrynis, hurling a kind of personal whirlwind at me,
has ravaged me completely with his bending and twisting,
having a dozen harmoniai in five strings.18
Even so, he too was a passable partner,
for if he did go astray at all, he made it good again. |
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The first line suggests a wild flurry of notes.19 The next two lines obviously refer to modulation between different scales. But if the |
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15 The source, schol. Ar. Nub. 971, gives 'in the archonship of Callias' = 456, but as this was not a year in which the quadrennial Great Panathenaea were celebrated, 'Callias' is thought to be a mistake for 'Callimachus', whose archonship fell in 446/5. |
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16 Ps.-Plut. De mus. 1133 bc from a 4th-c. source, perhaps Heraclides Ponticus (cf. 1132c): Plut. Agis 10. 7, De prof. virt. 84a, Apophthegmata Laconica 220c; Procl. ap. Phot. Bibl. 320b. For Phrynis' association with modulation cf. also Ar. Nub. 971, quoted above. p. 356. |
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17 See pp. 63 f. |
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18 Variant: 'in his pentachords'. |
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19 For strobilos 'whirlwind' in this context cf. Plato Com. fr. 285. The word may also mean 'pine-cone' and various other twisted-up things, but Düring's idea that Pherecrates is referring to some conical gadget for altering the tuning of a lyre-string is far-fetched (as in n. 4, 186 f.); cf. H. Schönewolf, Der jungattische Dithyrambos (Diss. Giessen, 1938) 67; E. K. Borthwick, Hermes 96 (1968), 67f.; E. Pöhlmann in Serta Indogermanica (1982), 310f. |
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