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Flutes and Elegiac Couplets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

David A. Campbell
David A. Campbell
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
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Extract

My purpose in this article is to call attention to the inconclusive nature of the evidence for the view that the proper accompaniment of early Greek elegiac poetry was the flute. The elegiac couplet has been aptly called ‘a variation upon the heroic hexameter in the direction of lyric poetry’. But how far did it go in this direction? In particular, did early elegiac poetry have a close connexion with music? A distinction is commonly drawn between poetry written κατὰ στίχον, for example the epic hexameter and the iambic trimeter, which was spoken or at most intoned, and poetry in lyric metres which was sung to musical accompaniment: to which group does elegiac poetry belong?

Passages in Plutarch and Pausanias and hints in the lexicographers and in the early elegists themselves have suggested to some scholars that there was a connexion between elegiac poetry and the flute.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 84 , November 1964 , pp. 63 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1964

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References

1 I am grateful to Dr R. Crowhurst, Professor J. A. Davison and Miss R. M. Harriott for their valuable comments on this article.

2 Hardie, W. R., Res Metrica 49Google Scholar, quoted by Bowra, C. M., Early Greek Elegists 3.Google Scholar

3 I ought, of course, to call the instrument an ‘aulos’, since it had a reed-mouthpiece and was therefore not a flute, but I prefer to use an English word which has many of the correct associations.

4 E.g. RE s.v. ‘Elegie’; Wegner, M., Das Musikleben der Griechen 83Google Scholar; Schmid-Stählin, , Geschichte der griechischen Literatur i 329 ff.Google Scholar; Edmonds, J. M., Elegy and Iambus i. 16Google Scholar; Page, D. L., ‘The Elegiacs in Euripides’ Andromache' in Greek Poetry and Life 206 ff.Google Scholar; Friedländer, Paul (with Hoffleit, Herbert B.), Epigrammata: Greek Inscriptions in Verse 66.Google ScholarHuchzermeyer, Helmut in his dissertation Aulos und Kithara in der griechischen Musik (Münster, 1931)Google Scholar goes further and says (29 ff.) that the iambic verse of Archilochus, Semonides of Amorgos, Hipponax and Ananius was also accompanied by the flute.

5 For the performance of Solon's Salamis see below.

6 These passages are mentioned as evidence by Bowra, 6, n. 4, 6; Schmid-Stählin, i 354 n. 5; Huchzermeyer, 38–40; Wegner, 202 s.v. ‘Elegie’.

7 Cf. Lattimore, Richmond's translation, Greek Lyrics 29.Google Scholar

8 Pierson. If ἀκούων, the MSS. reading, is kept, the passage is of even less value.

9 For flute and lyre (though without voice) in a religious context in Theognis, cf. 761–3,

10 Edmonds explained the line as a reference to the piper's absence; but the inadequacy of the accompanist has often been the excuse for an inadequate performance.

11 Hermesianax vii 37, Strabo xiv 643, Plutarch Mus. 8.

12 Hermann. MSS. κνημωθείς.

13 Jacobsthal, P., Göttinger Vasen, A.G.G., N.F. 14 (1912) 62Google Scholar with pl. 22. 81–2; Lullies, R., ‘Zur boiotisch rotfigurigen Vasenmalerei’, Athenische Mittelungen 65 (1940) 6 ff.Google Scholar with pl. 3. The cup is Boeotian, and Jacobsthal argued that the painting was a copy of an Attic vase of the school of Duris. But the lettering was incised after the cup was fired and need not be the work of the artist, who in any case was only a copyist. Altogether the cup is poor evidence for anything.

14 Preludes to elegiac γνώμαι are usually more confident in tone than this; cf. Could not have been the beginning of one of Praxilla's dactylic or dactylo-trochaic lines?

15 CVA Athens i III Ic pl. 3. 1, 3 (NM 1357).

16 Munich (Museum antiker Kleinkunst) 2646.

17 Kretschmer, Paul, Die Griechischen Vaseninschriften 87Google Scholar, does not link the inscription with Theognis, but supplies with

18 The evidence is collected by Page, loc. cit., 206–9, but he uses it differently. The word does not occur in earlier writers except for Echembrotus' inscription: see below.

19 Cf. Soph. OC 1222 Eur. Ph. 1028 Aes. Ag. 990 Eur. Ph. 791 Aes. Suppl. 681 Eum. 332 In Eur. Alc. 447 is ambiguous: see A. M. Dale's excellent note.

20 Perhaps we should say pseudo-Plutarch with F. Lasserre: see his edition, especially 104.

21 See Davison, J. A., ‘Notes on the Panathenaea’, JHS lxxviii (1958) 23–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Panathenaic amphorae of c. 560 and c. 540 show that αὐλῳδία was recognised at the festival at that period.

22 For an uncomplimentary assessment of the writer see The New Oxford History of Music, i 379, where Isobel Henderson calls the pseudo-Plutarchian De Musica ‘an unintelligent source of late antiquity’.

23 It is possible, too, that Plutarch confused the terms ἔλεγοι and ἐλεγεῑα in his source, as I believe Pausanias did: see below.

24 After ἐλεγεῑα some MSS have θρῆνοι, some καὶ θρῆνοι, which must be glosses.

25 For the attempts see RE s.v. ‘Echembrotos’, Diehl, Anth. Lyr. Gr. ii1 39, Page, loc. cit. 217, n. 1.

26 Am. iii 9.3. Page, 209–10, lists passages which connect elegiac verse with threnody.

27 Cf. Mus. 5.

28 For a recent discussion of Homeric performances see SirBowra, Maurice's contribution to A Companion to Homer, ed. Wace, and Stubbings, , 22 ff.Google Scholar, with the remarks on 22 about Hesiod.