(Gk.: ‘prelude’).
A term used in ancient Greece in the period of Pindar for the prelude or introduction to a song but subsequently associated with the melodically extravagant, chromatically inflected solo songs or monodies of which Timotheus of Miletus was the most significant exponent. Hans Kotter used the term (in Greek) in the early 16th century for a freely constructed keyboard prelude in a tablature (in CH-Bu) assembled for the humanist Bonifacius Amerbach (ed. in SMd, vi, 1967; facs. in W. Apel: The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900–1600, Cambridge, MA, 1942, 5/1961, p.29; transcr. also in HAM, no.84g).
W. Merian: Der Tanz in den deutschen Tabulaturbüchern (Leipzig, 1927/R), 37–75
Y. Rokseth: ‘The Instrumental Music of the Middle Ages and Early Sixteenth Century’, NOHM, iii (1960/R), 406–65
O. Tiby: ‘La composition anabolique’, Histoire de la musique, ed. Roland-Manuel, i (Paris, 1960), 419–22
See also Melanippides and Prooimion.
MICHAEL TILMOUTH/R