(Gk. kitharoidos; Lat. citharoedus).
In ancient Greece, a singer who accompanied himself on the Kithara. The kitharode, a professional or at least highly trained musician, was associated with formal public religious occasions, among them the festivals that included musical as well as athletic competitions. In these competitions, as can be seen in Athenian 5th-century vase paintings, the performer might stand on a small podium while the judges, wearing wreaths and carrying staves, sat or stood nearby.
The performer usually wore an elaborate costume, a flowing gown with a coloured border, or a long robe with a mantle over it fastened at the shoulder (for illustration see Kithara). Both the work and the performance might be judged, for the well-known kitharodes at least were the creators of the works they presented. An important part of their repertory consisted of nomoi (see Nomos), solo songs in several sections created according to specific rules (the basic meaning of nomos is rule or law).
Although the term kitharoidos (which combines the earlier terms kitharistes, ‘lyre player’, and aoidos, ‘singer’) does not appear until the 5th century bce, such singers to the lyre were known centuries earlier. Two of them, Phemius and Demodocus, are mentioned in the Odyssey; and the Iliad recounts how the legendary Thracian musician Thamyras offered to compete with the Muses, who punished his hubris by taking away his ‘divine song’ and making him forget how to play his instrument.
The first musical competition at the Spartan festival of the Carneia (said to have been won by the poet Terpander) may have been held as early as 670 bce; in Athens kitharoedic events were part of the Great Panathenaia by the late 6th century. Timotheus, a popular late 5th-century musician whose nomos the Persians was performed long after his death, was punished by the authorities for breaking the rules governing kitharoedic contests, and for performing works considered inappropriate for young people.
Kitharodes continued to perform in musical contests in the 4th century bce. Plato, who regarded it as a responsibility of his ideal state to regulate them, castigated the musician Kinesias for performing not what might edify but what would only give pleasure to his audience. Festivals including both athletic events and musical competitions (e.g. the Nemean Games) continued to be held in the Hellenistic era, although the customs surrounding them were affected by changes in social and political circumstances.
H. Abert: ‘Kitharoidia’,Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1921), 530–34
J.D. Beazley: ‘Citharoedus’,Journal of Hellenic Studies, xlii (1922), 70–98
J.A. Kemp: ‘Professional Musicians in Ancient Greece’, Greece and Rome, xiii (1966), 213–22
M. Maas and J.M.Snyder: Stringed Instruments of Ancient Greece (New Haven, CT, 1989)
M. Maas: ‘Timotheus at Sparta: the Nature of the Crime’, Musical Humanism and its Legacy: Essays in Honor of Claude Palisca, ed. N.K. Baker and B.R. Hanning (Stuyvesant, NY, 1992), 37–52
MARTHA MAAS