(fl c630 bce). Greek lyric poet. He was possibly a native of Sardis in Lydia. Alcman spent his entire professional life in Sparta. This city was then startlingly different from the grim barracks state that it had been and would again become: its citizens cultivated art, poetry, music and the dance with intensity and brilliance. The poet himself commented on this: ‘To play well upon the lyre weighs evenly with the steel’, that is, military valour (Edmonds, frag.62).
As the trainer of a choir of girls who sang and danced at Spartan religious festivals, Alcman wrote maiden-songs (see Partheneia), which brought him particular fame. Extensive portions of one of these have survived (PLouvre E3320); the lines recreate with great immediacy the half-humorous, half-impassioned rivalry of his young choristers. For solo performance he composed proöimia, preludes to the recitation of Homeric poetry (see Terpander); and several vivid fragments of amatory verse also survive. He described the sleep of nature in a passage remarkable for its subtly musical gradations of vowel and consonant (frag.36).
Alcman referred to himself as a professional performer on the kithara, and characterized its clear, sharp sound (frags.37, 82). But he also twice mentioned aulos playing (frags.79, 80), with specific reference to its associations with Asia Minor. In one passage (frag.143) he spoke of the many-stringed Asiatic magadis. According to Pseudo-Plutarch (On Music, 1135f–1136a = frag.83), he described Apollo himself as playing the aulos; the ascription may be evidence of an early desire for a native Dorian tradition in which the foreign aulos has gained acceptance.
J.M. Edmonds, ed. and trans.: Lyra graeca, i (London and New York, 1922, 2/1928/R), 44–135
D.L. Page, ed.: Alcman: The Partheneion (Oxford, 1951/R)
D.L. Page, ed.: Poetae melici graeci (Oxford, 1962), 2–91
D.A. Campbell, ed.: Greek Lyric Poetry (London and New York, 1967, 2/1982), 18ff, 192ff
D.L. Page, ed.: Lyrica graeca selecta (Oxford, 1968/R), 1–28
D.A. Campbell, ed. and trans.: Greek Lyric, ii (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1988), 336–505
C.M. Bowra: Greek Lyric Poetry from Alcman to Simonides (Oxford, 1936, 2/1961), 16–73
G. Comotti: La musica nella cultura greca e romana (Turin, 1979, 2/1991; Eng. trans., 1989), 18
A. Riethmüller and F. Zaminer, eds.: Die Musik des Altertums (Laaber, 1989), 143–5
W.D. Anderson: Music and Musicians in Ancient Greece (Ithaca, NY, 1994), 65–71
For further bibliography see Greece, §I.
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN