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His own singing style is evidently something more relaxed and beguiling. He proceeds modestly to identify himself as the only true successor of Orpheus and Terpander. Orpheus first brought the lyre to birth, Terpander equipped it with ten strings (?),22 |
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and now Timotheus brings forth
his kithara with eleven-note
measures and rhythms, opening up
the Muses' treasure-chamber of manifold song. |
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The diction is somewhat obscure, but there cannot be much doubt that Timotheus is referring to the eleven-stringed instrument with which tradition connects him.23 |
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The lady Music in the Pherecrates passage declares that Timotheus' maltreatment of her goes beyond all the others she has mentioned. He leads her through amazing ant-hills,24 and if he catches her on her owndoes this mean when the instrument is playing solo?he pulls her clothes off and untunes her with his dozen strings. In three further lines which have become detached but probably still refer to Timotheus, she speaks of exharmonic and 'overshoot' (extra-high) notes,25 or niglaroi,26 and of being filled up with wrigglies.27 |
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We have a substantial portion of the text of one of Timotheus' most celebrated citharodic compositions, his Persians.28 It is a vivid |
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22 This is very surprising, but it seems to be what Timotheus means. Possibly he is combining the tradition that Terpander added three strings (sc. to the four-stringed lyre) with the legend that gave Orpheus a seven-stringed lyre. He ignores the advances of Phrynis. But in Aristotle's opinion (Metaph. 993b15) 'if Timotheus had not been born, there is a lot of music we would not have, yet if Phrynis had not existed, there would not have been a Timotheus'. |
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23 Hellenistic forgery of Laconian decree ap. Boeth. Inst. Mus. 1.1, Nicom. p. 274. 5, Paus. 3. 12. 10, etc. The poem of Ion of Chios (there is no good reason to doubt his authorship) shows that the eleven-stringed lyre was created not later than 422, the year of Ion's death. |
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24 The metaphor echoes, or is echoed by, the one Aristophanes applies to Agathon's vocal lines (above, p. 354). On the intricate, twisting and back-turning paths in ant-hills cf. Plut. De soll. an. 968b, Ael. NA 6. 43. |
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25 This became the technical term for the highest tetrachord of the Greater Perfect System (p 221). |
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26 Apparently some kind of instrumental effect or figure, cf. Eup. fr. 121 (with Kassel-Austin), Phrynichus Com. fr. 74. 1 cj.: D. Restani, Rivista italiana di musicologia 18 (1983), 186-90. |
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27 There is a pun on karnpai 'bends' and kámpai 'caterpillars'. |
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28PMG 788-91; U. yon Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Timotheos: Die Perser For an imaginative reconstruction of the first performance see J. Herington, Poetry into Drama, 151-60. |
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