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technitai, including a number of epic and dramatic poets, rhapsodes and actors, instrumentalists and singers. In 97, at least, besides regular citharists there were some 'accompanying citharists' (potikitharizontes) and a 'Pythian citharist' (see p. 60). |
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Varieties of Public Music |
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At festivals which included musical competitions the public could often witness performances in a whole range of genres: epic recitation, citharodic nomoi, instrumental solos (kithara, aulos, or harp), and dithyrambs, as well as drama in its several forms (including satyr-plays). At the Samian Heraia in the second century BC there was a competition for composers of solo kithara music.80 Apart from the official competitions, musicians and entertainers of various kinds, acrobats, puppeteers, dancers, parodists, and so on, might put on free displays 'for the god', adding a day or more to the festival and earning themselves much favour with the authorities. We have records of such performances especially from Delos and Delphi.81 |
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Many of the tragedies performed were old ones, especially plays of Euripides. Sometimes individual recitalists quarried material from these classics. The papyrus that preserves music to the Iphigeneia in Aulis was not a text of the whole play but contained merely lyrical excerpts (not in the proper order), and the same is probably true of the Orestes papyrus and other Hellenistic papyri containing tragic music. At the Pythian festival of (probably) 194 BC an eminent aulete from Samos, Satyrus by name, won the prize (no one else venturing to compete), and after the sacrifice that officially concluded the Games he gave as a bonus 'a song with chorus, Dionysus, and a kitharisma from Euripides' Bacchae'. Several things are unclear about this report, but there can be no doubt that it refers to some sort of arrangement made from a section of Euripides' play.82 |
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80 C Michel, Recueil d'inscriptions grecques, no. 901.5 didaskaloi ton kithariston, where these 'instructors' are parallel to the 'poets' of new tragedies etc. |
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81 Sifakis, 19f., 72f., 83, 85, 96-8, 104f. For the general phenomenon of travelling musicians in the Hellenistic age, and a collection of the civic inscriptions recording honours bestowed on them in various places, see M. Guarducci, Atti della Reale Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, ser. 6.2 (1927-9). 629-65. |
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82SIG 648 B, the inscription to an honorific statue of Satyrus. He also had a statue on Delos (SIG 648 A = IG 11. 1079), and he is known to have won victories elsewhere. The difficulties of the above notice are: how does an aulete 'give' a song with chorus, or a kitharisma, which should mean a kithara solo? How can a kitharisma be 'from' a tragedy? Were the two items separate, or was it one piece involving aulos, kithara, and voices? Cf. Sifakis, 96 f. with literature. |
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