Pindar (Morice)/Chapter 1
PINDAR.
CHAPTER I.
GREEK CHORAL POETRY—ITS FORM.
The poems of Pindar are the most considerable surviving specimens of the Choral Ode, an important and characteristic product of Greek genius, to which modern literature presents no exact analogy. Poetry in the modern sense of the word was only one of the elements which entered necessarily into its composition. With this were inseparably combined Music, both vocal and orchestral, and a third element, which, in default of a better name, may be called the Dance, but which differed wholly both in character and object from its modern namesake. The result was a complex work of art, of whose effect some idea may be formed by imagining the performance of a cantata, sung, in solemn or joyous procession, by a corps de ballet to the accompaniment of a moving orchestra of flutes and harps. The whole performance was, originally at any rate, conceived and directed by a single artist, who thus combined the functions of librettist, composer, and ballet-master. And though in practice no doubt the poet, as time went on, more and more delegated the two latter sets of duties to subordinates, yet we find him to the last retaining a certain amount of responsibility and claiming a certain amount of credit, not for the verses only, but for the accompanying music and spectacle. It is to be noticed further that in this threefold combination the element of Poetry always maintained its supremacy, the Music and the Dance remained always in due subordination to it. Such a phenomenon as the modern Italian Opera has made familiar to us—a libretto overshadowed and made insignificant by the music of which it is the vehicle rather than the theme—would have shocked a Greek's sense of artistic propriety. "Songs," says Pindar,[1] are "lords of the lyre:" and as the lyre obeys the song, so the dance obeys the lyre,—"Golden lyre, the dancers' step lists thy bidding!"[2] The Greek Choral Ode required, then, not merely a combination of these three elements, but a combination of them in due subordination to one another, the Ballet adapting itself to the Music, and that again to the Poem, which was the groundwork of the whole structure.
Ancient authors classify, with great precision, but perhaps with an excess of subtlety, the various subdivisions of Greek Choral poetry. Originally, no doubt, the distinctions which they draw corresponded to real and essential differences of theme and treatment. The Pæan, for example, was originally a solemn hymn to Apollo sung to the monotonous and stately accompaniment of the ancient four-stringed lyre. The Dithyramb was once a wild improvisation in honour of Dionysus, the god of wine and revelry, and was accompanied properly by the shrill and exciting music of the flute. These and other varieties of the Ode arose in different parts of Greece, and were marked by the special characteristics, and appropriated to the peculiar religious observances of the tribes with whom they originated. But, as time went on, the development of international festivals, and the ever-increasing intercourse between the different tribes of Greece, drew more and more the representatives of the various local schools of poetry into acquaintance and connection with one another. Then gradually each began to influence, and be influenced by, the art of its neighbours. The Pæan gained freedom and enlivenment from contact with the Dithyramb, the Dithyramb borrowed from the Pæan something of its sobriety and stateliness. The harp and the flute, no longer the badges of rival schools, combined in rich and effective symphonies, solemn or orgiastic by turns, according as either element was allowed to prevail in the combination. Thus, while retaining their original names, and enough of individuality in form for musicians to distinguish them, the various species of Choral poetry drew closer and closer towards a common type. We hear of "Hymns," of "Prosodia," of "Pæans," and "Dithyrambs," and fragments of each kind have been preserved to us from the general wreck of Greek Lyric poetry. But we can see in these no very marked differences of theme, of style, or even of metre; and it is almost always impossible to decide to which class any fragment should be assigned, which we do not know, upon external evidence, to have belonged to one class and not to another.
A class of composition, originally widely distinct from both Pæan and Dithyramb, but which in time became, so far as we can judge, almost indistinguishable from either, was the so-called "Hyporchema" or Mimic-ballet. In this performance a narrative poem was sung (of course with musical accompaniment), while the dancers represented the action of the poem in a species of pantomime. The Hyporchema was thus, as it were, a link between Greek Choral poetry and the drama. It is impossible to determine how far exactly it differed from the later developments of the Pæan, since in this too the gestures of the dancers in some way illustrated the music and the poem. Perhaps we may get an idea of the difference by distinguishing sharply between the successive sentiments (hope, fear, triumph, &c.) expressed in a poem, and the actions described in it (as an attack, a repulse, a murder, a sudden discovery, and the like), and imagining the gestures of the Pæan-chorus as contrived to illustrate the former, and those of the Hyporchema to mimic the latter. There is no conspicuous dissimilarity of theme or treatment between the extant fragments of Hyporchemata and the other classes of Choral Odes. Narrative passages abound in the "Hymns" and "Prosodia," no less than in the "Hyporchemata," and, for anything that we can see to the contrary, the pantomimic method might have been applied to the one as well as to the other. But it is clear that in all these matters the Greeks had a very nice sense of artistic propriety, and in the lack of more complete information, we must suppose that the gestures which were suitable to the lively and cheerful Hyporchema would have been considered unduly realistic, and therefore indecorous, in the solemn and magnificent "Pæan" or "Encomium."
To Stesichorus, a Sicilian poet of the sixth century B.C., Choral poetry owed the final arrangement of its metrical system. Thenceforward a perfect Choral Ode consisted of a succession of stanzas arranged in "ternaries" or groups of three, the first stanza in each group being called the Strophe, the second the Antistrophe, and the third the Epode. Any one of these stanzas, viewed in itself, seems quite irregular in its construction: it may consist of any number of lines up to a dozen or thereabouts, and these lines may vary indefinitely in rhythm and length. But on examination it will always be found, that an Antistrophe corresponds in rhythm—line for line, and foot for foot—to the preceding Strophe; and further, that all the strophes of any one Ode are identical in rhythm (so that, in fact, all the Strophes and Antistrophes are but repetitions of a single form of stanza), while the Epodes similarly correspond to one another, though they differ from the Strophes and Antistrophes. Every Ode accordingly, of whatever length, employs two forms of stanza only; and if we represent one by the letter A and the other by the letter B, the successive stanzas of the whole Ode will be represented by the sequence AAB, AAB, AAB, &c. The rationale of this structure is simple enough. The Ode was to be sung by an advancing procession of dancers, whose dance consisted of a succession of similar figures, each figure being followed by an interval of rest. For the sake of symmetry it was arranged that each figure should be subdivided into two exactly corresponding halves, every step and gesture of the first finding its reflex in the second. The first half-figure was called the "Strophe" or Turn, the second the "Antistrophe" or Return, and the period of rest between the figures the "Epode"—i.e., the Coda. These natural divisions of the dance were regulated by corresponding changes in the music: the melody which accompanied the Strophe would be repeated da capo for the Antistrophe, and a second theme would be introduced, to fill the interval of the Epode while the dancers rested. The Poem, adapting itself to the requirements of this arrangement, assumed the form we have above described: the balanced rhythms of its Strophes and Antistrophes answering to the evolutions of the advancing dancers, while the Epodes were sung during their halts. In the "Pindarick" odes of Gray—The Bard and The Progress of Poesy—a similar structure has been applied with good effect to English versification.
In short processional Odes, circumstances sometimes made it unnecessary or undesirable that the progress of the Chorus should be broken by halts. In these, accordingly, we find Strophes and Antistrophes, but no Epodes. An example of this is Pindar's Twelfth Pythian. Also the Dithyramb, in the hands of Lasus of Hermione, who is said to have been a teacher of Pindar, flung off altogether the fetters of Strophe and Antistrophe, with how much advantage to itself it is impossible, in the absence of evidence, to say. And the choruses of Attic tragedy (which were not independent compositions, but, as it were, choral fragments scattered over an otherwise non-choral work) employed, for some good reason doubtless, a far less regular arrangement of Strophes, Antistrophes, and Epodes. But apparently all other lofty forms of Choral poetry, and certainly all Pindar's finest Odes, adopted uniformly the threefold sequence of Stesichorus. That sequence, in its beautiful symmetry, and apparent intricacy yet real simplicity, is a truly characteristic product of Grecian genius and taste. Devised at first mainly with a view to the convenience of the dancers, it served also to break most agreeably to the ear the monotony of a long series of repeated stanzas and melodies. Like all that is best in Greek art, aiming at use, it produces beauty with it.
Little that would be interesting to the general reader is known as to the musical element in a Choral Ode. We have seen that it employed voices and instruments, both stringed and wind. Yet harmony in the modern sense seems to have been unknown to the Greeks. They combined bass and treble parts—or, as they called them, "male" and "female"—both in vocal and instrumental music, but apparently always in octaves. A modern reader, accustomed to the rich and delicate chords and dissonances of the music of our own day, or the magnificent contrapuntal achievements of Bach and Handel, will wonder at the seemingly extravagant language held by classical authors as to the effect on the emotions of men, and even on the character of nations, produced by mere unharmonised melodies, and those, according to modern ideas, of the most unimpressive kind. But if the Greeks were ignorant of harmony, their appreciation of pitch and rhythm seems to have been infinitely keener than our own. Some of their scales involving quarter-tones would baffle the most accurate of modern singers. And the rhythms of a Pindaric Ode would be incomprehensible to a modern audience, accustomed only to two-time, three-time, and their multiples.[3] Let any musical reader attempt to reduce to bars the rhythm of the first line of Pindar's First Olympian,—
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and he will see how subtle must have been the ears which could appreciate and enjoy such measures. Yet it is unquestionable that the Greeks did appreciate and enjoy them, and did sing melodies which no modern keyed instrument could reproduce, with the most nice distinction of the minutest intervals. It is then the less surprising, though it is surprising still, that they were contented in their music to gratify their sense of melody and rhythm, without exploring the mines of musical enjoyment which have been opened to modern audiences by the discoverers of counterpoint and harmony.
It may not be inappropriate to close this chapter with an extract from Pindar's First Pythian Ode, describing in a highly imaginative vein the soothing effect of the harp, not on human passions only, but on the wrath of gods, and even (as he fondly dreams) on brute and inanimate natures—the eagle and the lightning.
Strophe.
"Golden lyre, that Phœbus shares with the Muses violet-crowned!
Thee, when opes the joyous revel, our frolic feet obey,
And minstrels wait upon the sound,
While thy chords ring out their preludes, and guide the dancers' way.
Thou quenchest the bolted lightning's heat,
And the eagle of Zeus on the sceptre sleeps, and closes his pinions fleet.
Antistrophe.
King of birds! His hooked head hath a darkling cloud o'ercast,
Sealing soft his eyes. In slumber his rippling back he heaves,
By thy sweet music fettered fast.
Ruthless Ares' self the muster of bristling lances leaves,
And gladdens awhile his soul with rest.
For the shafts of the Muses and Leto's son can melt an immortal's breast."
By "the shafts of the Muses and Leto's son" (i.e., Apollo), Pindar means the piercing strains of the lyre. Then in the Epode the measure changes—the dancers halt in solemn awe and expectancy, while the poet describes the opposite effect, the sense of horror and aggravated misery with which the music of the lyre strikes the ear of Zeus's enemies,—the foes of good, the vanquished giants of old, "dreeing their doom " in Tartarus, pinioned beneath the snows and fixes of Ætna.
Epode.
"But, whom Zeus loves not, back in fear all senseless cower, as in their ear
The sweet Pierian voices sound, in earth or monstrous Ocean's round.
So he. Heaven's foe, that in Tartarus lies,
The hundred-headed Typho, erst
In famed Cilician cavern nurst,—
Now, beyond Cumæ, pent below
Sea cliffs of Sicily, o'er his rough breast rise
Ætna's pillars, skyward soaring, nurse of year-long snow!"
- ↑ Ol. ii. 1.
- ↑ Pyth. i. 2.
- ↑ It is true that Mendelssohn, in his 'Antigone' and 'Œdipus' choruses, has employed modern musical notation to represent the sequences of long and short syllables in elaborate Greek choral rhythms. But, to complete his bars, he has been obliged to treat a long syllable as equivalent to any number of short ones, two, three, or even more: whereas it seems certain that the ancients always considered a long syllable as representing two short ones, neither more nor less. For example, a trochee (—◡) in the Strophe may be answered occasionally by a tribrach (◡◡◡) in the Antistrophe, but never by a proceleusmatic (◡◡◡◡), and so with other feet.
The Sapphic metre has been several times set to music by modern composers. But the rhythm of its three long lines is necessarily somewhat distorted in the process—usually thus:
instead of the original
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