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tragedy and comedy), but he does not say that all dithyramb took that form, and a later fourth-century source speaks of the dithyramb as having become 'mimetic', like the citharodic nome, and for that reason astrophic. There is a suggestion of the use of soloists, and of an analogy with the actors' arias in tragedy.32 |
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Philoxenus of Cythera, who lived from about 435 to about 380, and is said to have been for a short time a slave of Melanippides', was another dithyrambist, often coupled with Timotheus as a representative of the same trends. Changes of mode, genus, and rhythm are particularly mentioned: |
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The dithyrambic composers used to change their modes too, making them Dorian, Phrygian, and Lydian in the same song; and they would exchange their melodic lines, making them sometimes enharmonic, sometimes chromatic, and sometimes diatonic, and in their rhythms they continued (sc. following Stesichorus and Pindar) to practice licences quite boldlyI mean the composers of the age of Philoxenus, Timotheus, and Telestes, because with the ancients the dithyramb was just as regulated as anything else.33 |
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The Philoxenian style of dithyramb is twice contrasted with the Pindaric, as the paradigm of the new as against the older.34 |
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More specific information is vouchsafed about Philoxenus' Mysians. According to Aristotle, he tried to compose it in the Dorian mode, but the very nature of the dithyrambic genre forced him back into the conventional Phrygian. This sounds like a rather tendentious way of saying that the work progressed from a Dorian to a Phrygian modality. Fortunately we have a more detailed analysis of it, almost certainly from Aristoxenus, which enables us to reconstruct in general outline the scheme of modulations. The first part of the work was in Hypodorian, its middle in Hypophrygian and Phrygian, and its last section in Dorian and Mixolydian.35 The terms |
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32 Pl. Resp. 394c: ps.-Arist. Pr. 19. 15. |
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33 Dion. Hal. Comp. 131 f. Telestes of Selinus is named elsewhere as one of the most important of these poets. There is record of a victory that he won at Athens in 401. His surviving fragments (PMG 805-12) show an interest in the legendary history of music and of instruments. It is noteworthy that he twice mentions rapid fingering: 805c. 3 of the aulos, 808.4 of a harp(?). |
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34 Aristox. fr. 76; Diogenes of Seleucia, SVF iii. 222. 20 (Philod. Mus. i p. 133 Rispoli), who says intriguingly that despite the great difference of ethos, the underlying manner is the same. |
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35 Arist. Pol. 1342b9-12 = PMG 826; ps.-Plut. De mus. 1142f. The title of the work is slightly corrupted in both passages, but its restoration is virtually certain. Why |
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(Footnote continued on next page) |
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