(Gk. dithurambos).
Name for Dionysus and hence primarily a song in his honour (cf Paean). Though probably older, the term first appears in a text of Archilochus (fl early 7th century bce), where it is suggested that one of a group of revellers or celebrants leads the rest in singing a dithyramb (West, frag.120). With Arion of Methymna (c600 bce), the dithyramb became more literary and a more practised public choral production. According to Herodotus (Histories, l.23), Arion was the first known composer to produce a type of choral song that he called ‘dithyramb’. Lasus of Hermione (6th century bce), who introduced dithyrambic contests between the Athenian tribes, seems also to have brought innovations to the musical style of the dithyramb (see Pseudo-Plutarch, On Music, 1141c). Prominent 5th-century dithyrambic poets include Simonides, Pindar and Bacchylides. Starting in the mid-5th century bce, Melanippides, Timotheus of Miletus and other avant-garde composers introduced more radical stylistic changes, such as more intricate scales, a more prominent aulos accompaniment, and solos, including the Anabolē. This development continued into the 4th century ce (Plato, Laws, iii.700d), and the dithyramb subsequently diminished in importance, though surviving at Athens until at least c200 ce.
The term has generally been revived when an evocation of the wild and vehement qualities of Dionysus (Bacchus) is intended, even though such attributes were not always evident in ancient dithyrambs. Tomášek in the early 19th century adopted the term for certain of his piano pieces opp.52 and 65 (1815, 1818); these are sectional works, often in ternary form, with alternating stormy and lyrical episodes, but despite the occasional use of double octaves in syncopated rhythms, the limited idiom of the time and the composer’s own restricted harmonic vocabulary prevent any real expression of Bacchic frenzy. Schubert, who certainly knew Tomášek’s pieces, gave the title ‘Dithyrambe’ to one of his own songs (d801, 1824), a setting of the Schiller poem Der Besuch, which evokes the gods of Greece; in it Bacchus leads the procession of Olympians, and Schubert conceived the song as a stormy and passionate bacchanal. 20th-century examples include the last movement of Stravinsky’s Duo concertant for violin and piano (1931–2), whose ‘effect is that of an exalted threnody’ (E.W. White: Stravinsky: the Composer and his Works, London, 1966, p.335); the central movement of Henze’s Symphony no.3 (1949–50) and the same composer’s Drei Dithyramben (1958) for chamber orchestra; and Dithyramb I and II (1972) by Edwin Roxburgh.
A. Pickard-Cambridge: Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy (Oxford, 1927, rev. 2/1962 by T.B.L. Webster), 1–59
A. Pickard-Cambridge: The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (Oxford, 1953, rev. 2/1968 by J. Gould and D.M. Lewis)
H. Froning: Dithyrambos und Vasenmalerei in Athen (Würzburg, 1971)
B. Zimmermann: Dithyrambos: Geschichte einer Gattung (Göttingen, 1992)
B. Zimmermann: ‘Das Lied der Polis: zur Geschichte des Dithyrambos’, Tragedy, Comedy and the Polis: Nottingham 1990, ed. A.H. Sommerstein and others (Bari, 1993), 39–54
MAURICE J.E. BROWN/DENISE DAVIDSON GREAVES