Dithyramb

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Dithyramb

The dithyramb was originally an ancient Greek

Ancient Greece

The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
hymn

Hymn

A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity/deities, a prominent figure or an epic tale....
(d????aµß?? - dithurambos) sung to the god Dionysus

Dionysus

In classical mythology, Dionysus or Dionysos , is the God of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, and a major figure of Greek mythology, and one of the twelve Olympians, among whom Greek mythology treated Dionysus as a late arrival....
and was also a term used as an epithet

Epithet

An epithet is a descriptive word or phrase accompanying or occurring in place of the name of a person or thing, which has become a fixed formula....
of the god.. Its wild and ecstatic character was contrasted by Plutarch

Plutarch

Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. AD 46 ? 120 ? commonly known in English as Plutarch ? was a Ancient Rome historian , biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonism....
with that of the paean

Paean

Paean is a term used to describe a type of triumphal or grateful song, usually choral though sometimes individual. It comes from the ancient Greek pa??? "song of triumph, any solemn song or chant" and it was also used as the name for the physician of the Greek gods and as an epithet of Apollo....
. Dithyrambos seems to have arisen out of this song: just as paean was both a hymn to and a title of Apollo

Apollo

In Greek mythology and Roman mythology, Apollo , is one of the most important and many-sided of the Twelve Olympians. The ideal of the kouros , Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun; truth and prophecy; archery; medicine and healing; music, poetry, and the arts; and more....
, Dithyrambos was an epithet

Epithet

An epithet is a descriptive word or phrase accompanying or occurring in place of the name of a person or thing, which has become a fixed formula....
of Dionysus as well as a song in his honor.

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Encyclopedia

The dithyramb was originally an ancient Greek

Ancient Greece

Hymn

Dionysus

Epithet

Plutarch

Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. AD 46 ? 120 ? commonly known in English as Plutarch ? was a Ancient Rome historian , biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonism....
with that of the paean

Paean

Apollo

Epithet

An epithet is a descriptive word or phrase accompanying or occurring in place of the name of a person or thing, which has become a fixed formula....
of Dionysus as well as a song in his honor. Greeks recognized in the epithet "he of the miraculous birth" and constructed an etymology

Etymology

Etymology is the study of the roots and history of words; and how their form and meaning have changed over time.In languages with a long detailed history, etymology makes use of philology, the study of how words change from culture to culture over time....
to confirm this. According to Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
, the dithyramb was the origin of the Ancient Greek theatre, and one may recognize as a dithyramb the chorus invoking Dionysus in Euripides

Euripides

Euripides was the last of the three great tragedy of classical Athens . Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias....
' The Bacchae
The Bacchae

The Bacchae is an Classical Greece tragedy by the Classical Athens playwright Euripides. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus in 405 BCE as part of a tetralogy that also included Iphigeneia at Aulis, and which Euripides' son or nephew probably directed....
. Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greece Greeks philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Platonic Academy in Ancient Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world....
, in The Laws, discussing various kinds of music, mentions "the birth of Dionysos, called, I think, the dithyramb".

Form

The dithyramb was described by A.W. Pickard-Cambridge as

an antistrophic composition
Antistrophe

Antistrophe is the portion of an ode sung by the chorus in its returning movement from west to east, in response to the strophe, which was sung from east to west....
, dealing with special themes taken from divine and heroic legend, but still maintaining its particular connexion with Dionysus, who is celebrated, apparently at or near the opening of the song, whatever its subject

Richard Hamilton notes that all of Pindar

Pindar

Pindar , was an Ancient Greek Lyric poetry poet.Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, Pindar is the one whose work is by far the best preserved, and critics in antiquity tended to regard him as the greatest....
's odes, like all of Greek lyric until the late 5th century BCE, with the exception of satyr play

Satyr play

Satyr plays were an Ancient Greece form of tragicomedy, similar to the modern-day burlesque style. They always featured a chorus of satyrs and were based in Greek mythology and contained themes of, among other things, drinking, overt sexuality , pranks and general merriment....
s, are written in strophe

Strophe

Strophe is a concept in poetry which properly means a turn, as from one Foot to another, or from one side of a chorus to the other.A strophe is also the part of the ode that the Greek chorus chants as it moves from right to left across the stage....
s, or stanza

Stanza

In poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "Verse " ....
s. The ancient Greeks themselves counted among the special criteria of the dithyramb its special rhythm, its flute accompaniment in Phrygian mode

Phrygian mode

Modes are early forms of scales used in music. The Phrygian mode can refer to two different musical modes or diatonic scales: the ancient Greek Phrygian mode and the Medieval Phrygian mode....
, its highly wrought vocabulary, its considerable narrative content and its originally antistrophic character.

Dithyrambs were sung by choruses at Delos

Delos

The island of Delos , isolated in the centre of the roughly circular ring of islands called the Cyclades, near Mykonos, is one of the most important mythological, historical and archaeological sites in Greece....
, but the literary fragments that have survived are largely Athenian. In Athens dithyrambs were sung by a Greek chorus

Greek chorus

The Greek chorus is a group of twelve or fifteen minor actors in tragedy and twenty-four in Ancient Greek comedy plays of classical Athens....
of up to fifty men or boys dancing in circular formation (there is no certain evidence that they may have originally been dressed as satyr

Satyr

In Greek mythology, satyrs are a troop of male companions of Pan and Dionysus ? "satyresses" were a late invention of poets ? that roamed the woods and mountains....
s) and probably accompanied by the aulos

Aulos

An aulos or tibia was an ancient Greece musical instrument. Different kinds of instruments bore the name, including a single pipe without a reed called the monaulos , and a single pipe held horizontally, as the modern flute, called the plagiaulos , but the most common variety must have been a reed instrument....
. They would normally relate some incident in the life of Dionysus. The leader of the chorus later became the solo protagonist, with lyrical interchanges taking place between him and the rest of the chorus.

Competitions between groups singing dithyrambs were an important part of festivals such as the Dionysia

Dionysia

The Dionysia was a large religious festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central event of which was the performance of tragedy and, since 487 BC, Greek comedy....
and Lenaia

Lenaia

The Lenaia was an annual festival with a dramatic competition but one of the lesser festivals of Athens and Ionia in ancient Greece. The Lenaia took place in the month of Gamelion, roughly corresponding to January....
. Each tribe would enter two choruses, one of men and one of boys, each under the leadership of a choragos. The results of dithyrambic contests in Athens were recorded with the names of the winning teams and choregoi recorded but not the poets, most of whom remain unknown. The successful choregos would receive a statue which would be erected - at his own expense - on a public monument to commemorate his group's victory.

History

The first dithyrambs were composed in Athens

Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
around the seventh century BC. Their inspiration is unknown, although it was likely non-Greek, as Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
explicitly states that the d?f??aµß?? was first brought to Corinth

Corinth

Corinth, or Korinth Corinth is now the capital of the Prefectures of Greece of Corinthia. The city is surrounded by the coastal townlets of Lechaio, Isthmia, Kechries, and the inland townlets of Examilia and the archaeological site....
by Arion of Lesbos

Arion

Arion was a legendary kitharode in ancient Greece, a Dionysus poet credited with inventing the dithyramb. The islanders of Lesbos Island claimed him as their native son, but Arion found a patron in Periander, tyrant of Corinth....
; the word is of unknown but probably non-Greek derivation. The form soon spread to other Greek city-states, and dithyrambs were composed by the poets Simonides

Simonides of Ceos

Simonides of Ceos , Greek Lyric poetry poet, was born at Ioulis on Kea . He was included, along with Sappho and Pindar, in the canonical list of nine lyric poets by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria....
and Bacchylides

Bacchylides

Bacchylides was an Ancient Greek Lyric poetry poet. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets which included his uncle Simonides....
, as well as Pindar

Pindar

Pindar , was an Ancient Greek Lyric poetry poet.Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, Pindar is the one whose work is by far the best preserved, and critics in antiquity tended to regard him as the greatest....
, the only one whose works have survived in anything like their original form.

Later examples were dedicated to other gods but the dithyramb subsequently was developed (traditionally by Arion

Arion

Arion was a legendary kitharode in ancient Greece, a Dionysus poet credited with inventing the dithyramb. The islanders of Lesbos Island claimed him as their native son, but Arion found a patron in Periander, tyrant of Corinth....
) into a literary form. According to Aristotle, it evolved into the Greek tragedy, and dithyrambs continued to be developed alongside tragedies for some time. The clearest sense of dithyramb as proto-tragedy comes from a surviving dithyramb by Bacchylides , though it was composed after tragedy had already developed more fully. As a dialogue between a single actor and a chorus, it is suggestive of what tragedy may have resembled before Aeschylus

Aeschylus

Aeschylus was an Ancient Greece playwright. He is often recognized as the father or the founder of tragedy, and is the earliest of the three Greek tragedy whose Play survive extant, the others being Sophocles and Euripides....
added a second actor. By the 4th century BC the genre was in decline, although the dithyrambic competitions did not come to an end until well after the Roman

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the Roman Republic phase of the Ancient Rome, characterised by an autocracy form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
takeover of Greece.

Dithyrambic compositions are rare in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
; one notable exception is Alexander's Feast by John Dryden

John Dryden

John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of English Restoration to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden....
, written in 1697. Franz Schubert

Franz Schubert

Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer. He wrote some 600 lieder, nine symphonies , liturgy music, operas, and a large body of chamber music and solo piano music....
wrote a song for bass voice called Dithyrambe, D801, published in 1826. Wolfgang Rihm

Wolfgang Rihm

Wolfgang Rihm is a Germany composer from Karlsruhe. He finished both his school and his studies in music theory and composition in 1972, two years before the premiere of his early work Morphonie at the 1974 Donaueschingen Festival launched his career as a prominent figure in the European new music scene....
composed a 30-minute work, Concerto, in 2000, with the subtitle Dithyrambe and a scoring for string quartet and orchestra.

A wildly enthusiastic speech or piece of writing is still occasionally described as dithyrambic. Contemporary American poet David Wojahn

David Wojahn

David Wojahn is a major American poet who teaches poetry in the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University and in the low residency MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts....
's poem "Dithyramb and Lamentation," from his 2006 collection Interrogation Palace, is an innovative take on the form, featuring sections with such titles as "Email" and "George W. Bush in Hell."

Footnotes

External links

- composed c. 500 BC

Dithyramb

Form

History

Footnotes

See also

External links