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The Innovations Of Lysander The Kitharist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Andrew Barker
Andrew Barker
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
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Extract

Since Epigonus spent most of his life in Sicyon, it seems likely that Lysander was himself one of the associates of Epigonus that the passage mentions. This would place him in the latter part of the sixth century. But we have no further information about Lysander, and nothing of what is known of Epigonus is any help in the interpretation of the present account. Some innovations in kithara-playing are being credited to Lysander, but what they are is far from clear.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , December 1982 , pp. 266 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1982

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References

1 On Epigonus see Athenaeus 183d, Pollux 4. 59, Aristoxenus, El. Harm. 3. 23–4.

2 e.g. Plato, Laws 669e, Aristotle, Pol. 1339b20.

3 For the stringed magadis see esp. Athenaeus 634e ff., and cf. Pollux 4. 61.

4 Pollux mentions it in a list of stringed instruments, giving no further information. In Hesychius it is not even obvious that a distinct kind of instrument is meant: iambykai are described merely as ‘instruments to which they sang iamboi’.

5 For this use of μαγαδ⋯ζειν see ps.-Aristotle, Problems 19. 919a 1, 921 a30.

6 For the technique see e.g. Sachs, C., The History of Musical Instruments (London, 1942 and 1977), p. 188, cf. p. 275.Google Scholar

7 μ⋯γαδις and συριγμ⋯ς are taken in this sense by S. Michaelides, The Music of Ancient Greece (London, 1978), p. 196 and pp. 313–4, following Gevaert.

8 For analyses of the varieties of chromatic scale see Aristoxenus, El. Harm. 50. 25–51. 11.

9 The forms of expression most frequently associated with chromatic tunings are sweetness and plaintiveness. See e.g. Anon. Bell. 26, cf. Aristoxenus, El. Harm. 23. 1–24. For χρ***μα in the sense ‘expressive colouring’, see e.g. Plato, Rep. 601 b, Antiphanes ap. Athenaeus 643d.

10 Association of the aulos with Dionysus, e.g. Euripides, Bacchae 127–8, 380; with spondeia e.g. ps.-Plutarch, De Mus. 1135a, Pollux 4. 79, 81; and cf. the terms .