EPINICIAN VARIATIONS: MUSIC AND TEXT IN PINDAR,PYTHIANS2 AND 12

Abstract

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. 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. This article will investigate the performance scenarios of two of Pindar's epinicians, 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 intertextuality, 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. 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.

Pindar’s <i>Pythian Twelve</i>: A Linguistic Commentary and a Comparative Study

“…the result of an insightful thought/vision' , Ayāsya Āṅgirasa may be referring to rv 10.67 itself. In this case, analogously to what Phillips (2013) proposes for Pythian Twelve, our hymn would be meta-aetiologic in nature.…”

“…Over the years, various aspects of the ode have been subject to thorough study, including its myth (e.g. Dolin 1965, Köhnken 1971, performance, and musical dimension (Phillips 2013 and. Often regarded as an ode of relatively straightforward interpretation (Radt 1974), close analysis of the text reveals that the epinicion presents several challenges to modern readers.…”

“…Here, the hyperbaton occurs at the beginning of the mythological digression about Perseus and the Gorgons. Clay (1992), followed by Segal (1995:12), Papadopoulou-Pirenne-Delforge (2001), Martin (2003) and Phillips (2013), argues that διαπλέκω means to 'interweave'24 in the light of hh 4.79-80, σάνδαλα … διέπλεκε "interwove [recte wove] sandals" and N. 7.98-99 βίοτον … διαπλέκοις "[that] you may interweave [recte weave] a life". According to this interpretation, Athena would be interweaving Euryale's lament and Perseus' cry of victory (cf.…”

“…In particular, the κεφαλᾶν πολλᾶν νόμος invented by Athena is commonly identified as the νόμος πολυκέφαλος. However, Phillips 2013Phillips , 2016 argues that the tune of many heads of P. 12 is the 'Athena nomos' , proposing that the final line of each strophe mimics the Athena nomos' modulation. The invention of the νόμος πολυκέφαλος was credited to Crates or Olympus (cf.…”

“…21 μιμήσαιτ᾽ ἐρικλάγκταν γόον, on which see chapter 5, section 2, 21. 29As recent references cf Martin 2003, Steiner 2013, and Phillips 2013.…”