The Classical Quarterly http://journals.cambridge.org/CAQ Additional services for The Classical Quarterly: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here EPINICIAN VARIATIONS: MUSIC AND TEXT IN PINDAR, PYTHIANS 2 AND 12 Tom Phillips The Classical Quarterly / Volume 63 / Issue 01 / May 2013, pp 37 - 56 DOI: 10.1017/S0009838812000791, Published online: 24 April 2013 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009838812000791 How to cite this article: Tom Phillips (2013). EPINICIAN VARIATIONS: MUSIC AND TEXT IN PINDAR, PYTHIANS 2 AND 12. The Classical Quarterly, 63, pp 37-56 doi:10.1017/ S0009838812000791 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAQ, IP address: 128.103.149.52 on 21 Aug 2014 Classical Quarterly 63.1 37–56 (2013) Printed in Great Britain 37 doi:10.1017/S0009838812000791 EPINICIAN VARIATIONS: MUSIC AND TEXT IN PINDAR, PYTHIANS 2 AND 12* The importance of music for epinician, as for all other types of choral performance in Archaic and Classical Greece, has long been recognized, but the exiguousness of the evidence for the compositional principles behind such music, and for what these poems actually sounded like in performance, has limited scholarly enquiries. Examination of Pindar’s texts themselves for evidence of his musical practices was for a long time dominated by extensive and often inconclusive debate about the relations between metres and modes.1 More recently scholars have begun to explore Pindar’s relations to contemporary developments in musical performance, and in doing so have opened up new questions about how music affected audiences as aesthetically and culturally significant in its own right, and how it interacted with the language of the text.2 This article will investigate the performance scenarios of two of Pindar’s epi- nicians, arguing that in each case the poems contain indications of specific musical accompaniments, and use these scenarios as a starting point for engaging with wider interpretative questions. The self-referential dimension of these compositions will be of particular importance; I shall argue that Pindar deployed a type of musical intertex- tuality, in which his compositions draw on pre-existing melodic structures, utilizing their cultural associations for the purposes of his own pieces, a process crucial to the dynamics of performance of the poems concerned.3 By doing so I shall attempt to reach a better understanding of the roles played by music in epinician performance and of Pindar’s place in relation to the musical culture in which he worked. PYTHIAN 12 IN PERFORMANCE This poem was composed for Midas of Acragas, victor in the auletic contest at Delphi in 490. It presents an aition of the ‘many-headed nomos’, invented by Athena from the * I am grateful to Armand D’Angour, Tim Rood, Oliver Thomas, Tim Whitmarsh and the journal’s anonymous referee for their comments on earlier drafts of this piece. 1 See L. Prauscello, ‘Epinician sounds: Pindar and musical innovation’, in P. Agócs, C. Carey and R. Rawles (edd.), Reading the Victory Ode (Cambridge, 2012), 58–82 for discussion of this problem, with detailed bibliography. I share her scepticism about the validity of seeing connections between particular modes and metres. 2 Studies include L. Pearson, ‘The dynamics of Pindar’s music: ninth Nemean and third Olympian’, ICS 2 (1977), 54–69; A. D’Angour, ‘How the dithyramb got its shape’, CQ 47 (1997), 331–51; J. Porter, ‘Lasus of Hermione, Pindar and the riddle of S’, CQ 57 (2007), 1–21; Prauscello (n. 1). See in general M.L. West, Ancient Greek Music (Oxford, 1992), 344–7. 3 Cf. D’Angour (n. 2) on the role of self-referentiality in Pindar’s response in Dith. 2 to Lasus of Hermione’s alterations of dithyrambic performance practice. This analysis is extended by Porter (n. 2), 6–10, who sees Pindar’s rhetoric in Dith. 2 as proclaiming an allegiance to a new Lasian ‘poetics of sound’. 38 TOM PHILLIPS lament of the Gorgons when Medusa was vanquished by Perseus. At 22–3 Athena is described as naming the nomos she has created: ἀλλά νιν ɛὑροῖσ’ ἀνδράσι θνατοῖς ἔχɛιν,|ὠνύμασɛνκɛφαλᾶν πολλᾶν νόμον. The aetiologizing here picks up on the pre- vious mention of the snakes’ heads (ὑπό τ’ ἀπλάτοις ὀφίων κɛφαλαῖς, 9),4 but 22–3 may also refer to the musical accompaniment of the performance. Aulos accompaniment would obviously be appropriate for a celebration of an aulete; indeed, it is hard to ima- gine the aulos not being used for this poem, whether accompanied by other instruments or not.5 Our sources give tantalizingly brief evidence for the use of nomoi. Ps.-Plutarch, De musica 1133F mentions that Stesichorus ‘made use of’ the so-called ‘Chariot nomos’: Στησίχορος ὁἹμɛραῖος οὔτ’ Ὀρφέα οὔτɛ Τέρπανδρον οὔτ’ Ἀρχίλοχον οὔτɛ Θαλήταν ἐμιμήσατο, ἀλλ’ Ὄλυμπον, χρησάμɛνος τῷἉρματɛίῳ νόμῳ καὶ τῷ κατὰ δάκτυλον ɛἴδɛι, ὅ τινɛς ἐξ Ὀρθίου νόμου φασὶν ɛἶναι. Stesichorus of Himera took as his model not Orpheus or Terpander or Archilochus or Thaletas, but Olympus, since Stesichorus used the Harmateios nomos and the dactylic species of rhythm, which some people say is derived from the Orthios nomos.6 Given that Stesichorus was not known as a composer of auletic nomoi, this suggests that ‘its identifiable features were transferable to a different musical medium’, in the case of Stesichorus, to solo performance on the cithara.7 The scholiast on Aristophanes, Frogs 1282, commenting on a passage in which Euripides alludes to Aeschylus’ penchant for drawing on citharodic melodies (μὴ πρίν γ’ ἀκούσῃςχἀτέραν στάσιν μɛλῶν | ἐκτῶν κιθαρῳδικῶν νόμων ɛἰργασμένην, 1281–2), make a similar claim about Aeschylus’ musical practice: Τιμαχίδας γράφɛι, ὡςτῷὀρθίῳ νόμῳ κɛχρημένου τοῦ Αἰσχύλου καὶἀνατɛταμένως.8 The sources tell us nothing about how poets ‘use’ nomoi, but they alert us to the possibility of the use of nomoi by other poets. It is clear from the sources that nomoi were melodic sequences which could be adapted to different per- formance modalities. West calls them ‘traditional patterns in which music was cast … schemes used for the singing of all kinds of verse’.9 Their rhythmic and melodic flexi- bility would have allowed them to be expanded upon, rearranged and varied according to the needs of the particular composer or performer. There is a connection here with the modalities of performance which Armand D’Angour has recently suggested were oper- ative in the Archaic and Classical periods, chiefly a type of melodizing practice which 4 See B. Gentili, P. Angeli Bernardini, E. Cingano and P. Giannini, Pindaro. Le Pitiche (Milan, 1995), on 23. 5 See e.g. F. Frontisi-Ducroux, ‘Athéna et l’invention de la flûte’, Musica e storia 2 (1994), 239– 57, at 260; A. Morrison, Performances and Audiences in Pindar’s Sicilian Victory Odes (London, 2007), 82–4. Both hypothesize choral performance with aulos accompaniment. 6 All translations are from A. Barker, Greek Musical Writings: I (Cambridge, 1984). 7 Barker (n. 6), 253. See further M.L. West, ‘Stesichorus’, CQ 21 (1971), 309. On the harmateios nomos cf. S. Hagel, Ancient Greek Music (Cambridge, 2010), 402–3. 8 See T. Fleming, ‘The musical nomos in Aeschylus’ Oresteia’, CJ 72.3 (1977), 222–33 and J. Danielewicz, ‘Il Nomos nella parodia di Aristofane (Ran. 1264 sgg.)’,inLirica greca e latina: atti del convegno di studi polacco-italiano (Rome, 1990), 131–42 for detailed discussion. 9 West (n. 7), 309–10. See F. Lasserre, Plutarque: de la musique (Olten, 1954), 22–9, and T. Power, The Culture of Kitharôidia (Washington, 2010), 215–24, on nomoi in general. While we should be sceptical of Lasserre’s validation of ancient classification of nomoi and of his thesis of the wide and pervasive influence of nomoi on musico-poetic practice in the Archaic and Classical period (see the comments of Barker [n. 6], 249–55), this should not lead to the conclusion that nomoi were never utilized in the manner indicated by the sources. EPINICIAN VARIATIONS 39 consisted in applying a given set of notes in different ways to different lines according to the pitch profiles of the words to which the melody was set. Musical training was not a matter of learning melodies specifically tailored to individual poems, but rather learning to apply a given note group, rather than fixed sequence, to variant word structures.10 Ps.-Plutarch, De musica 1133D discusses the ‘many-headed nomos’, ascribing its invention to the semi-legendary Phrygian aulete Olympus and reporting that it was dedi- cated to Apollo. The scholiast on Pythian 12.39c identifies this nomos with the one whose invention and naming by Athena is described at 12.22–3.11 The situation is com- plicated by the presence in the tradition of the ‘Athena nomos’, described at De musica 1143B–C. Given the fluidity and imprecision with which nomoi were classified in later antiquity,12 and the role ascribed to Athena in Pythian 12 as the inventor of the ‘many- headed nomos’, it seems reasonable to suppose that ‘Athena nomos’ and ‘many-headed nomos’ are different names for the same piece, a conflation which arises from their structural similarity and from Athena’s prominent role in both, with ‘Athena nomos’ perhaps acting as a gloss on the more obscure name.13 This identification is reinforced by the attribution of both nomoi to Olympus. I suggest that it was this nomos, on which Pindar drew for the musical accompaniment of Pythian 12. A poem centred around Athena’s invention of the aulos might be expected to make use of a well-known melodic and rhythmical structure associated with the goddess, allowing the poem to draw on the musical associations of such a piece.