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hand, fingers apart, sets the strings going, while the right hand moves the plectrum towards the kithara as if ready to strike it when the voice has paused in its song'.87 |
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The strumming compensated for the temporary absence of the voice by its loudness. Apart from the fact that all the strings were sounding together (even if some of them were damped), a plectrum in itself produces a stronger and sharper sound than do bare fingers; and it appears to have been employed energetically. Lucian gives us a satirical account of a bad citharode who attacks his instrument with such force that he breaks three strings at once.88 The strums might come thick and fast, as in the music that Epicharmus describes being provided by an expert citharist for dances in honour of Semele.89 In the dances depicted on certain works of art where the dancers themselves carry and apparently play kitharas,90 it may be that they did not do much more than strum, with a piper providing the continuo. We have evidence that this is how it was with the boys' chorus at the Spartan Hyakinthia (above, p. 21). |
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In such circumstances as those, with lyres serving chiefly to punctuate the pipe music with joyous peals of string sound, it may not have mattered if all the strums were alike. In serious playing, however, we should certainly expect some variety to be sought: at the least, some differentiation between non-cadential and cadential pauses, between mere suspensions of the melodic line and places where it reached some kind of completion. This is where damping with fingers of the left hand would come indamping various selections of strings to allow different notes to dominate the tone cluster at different moments. |
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One text distinctly suggests the use of this technique. Quintilian, to illustrate the point that the human mind can attend to several things |
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87Flor 15. Cf. also Lygdamus (Tibullus 3) 4. 41, digiti cum uoce locuti. On the other hand Lucian, Imag. 14. praising the playing of Panthea of Smyrna. speaks of her exact rhythm, 'the kithara singing in unison and the plectrum synchronized with her tongue'. |
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88Ind. 9. For another story about a citharode breaking a string during a contest see Strab. 6. 1. 9 (Timaeus, FGrH 566 F43, Conon, FGrH 26 F 1. 5, Anth. Pal. 9. 584. 4, etc.). By contrast, the citharists of Aspendos in Pamphylia were proverbial for playing in an introvert way, as if only to themselves, without the grand flourishes with the plectrum (Cic. Verr. 2. 1. 53 with schol. Bob. and ps.-Asc. ad loc., Zeno Myndius ap. Zenobium Athoum 3. 161 = vulg. 2. 30; Crusius, RE ii. 1724). |
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89 Epicharmus fr. 109 Kaibel. |
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90 e.g. on a sarcophagus from Capua of the first half of the 6th c. (Maas-Snyder, 44 fig. 5a), and the Attic red-figure vase New York 25. 78. 66 (Pl. 16). |
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