Nomos

(Gk.; plural nomoi).

One of the genres of ancient Greek music. Descriptions of specific nomoi in Greek literary sources suggest a complex style that came to be associated with virtuoso performers. Proclus's Useful Knowledge associates the term with one of his many epithets for Apollo, Nomimos, and provides a brief history of the genre: Chrysothemis the Cretan, wearing a splendid robe and playing the kithara in imitation of Apollo, was the first to sing a solo nomos; Terpander, using heroic metre, was the first to perfect the nomos, while Arion of Methymna, who was both poet and kitharode, expanded it; Phrynis of mitylene introduced innovations in the nomos: he combined the hexameter with a free metre and used more than seven strings; later, Timotheus gave it its current arrangement.

Stylistic generalizations about the nomos are difficult, but four types can be identified: two sung to the accompaniment of a kithara or an aulos and two performed by a solo kitharist or aulete. The earliest type is the kitharoedic, a nomos sung to the accompaniment of a kithara. Although attributions vary from source to source, Pseudo-Plutarch's On Music (1132c–1135c; on the authority of Heraclides Ponticus, Glaucus of Rhegium and Alexander) refers to Terpander as the one who first named a number of the kitharoedic nomoi and organized music in Sparta. The first kitharoedic nomoi were in dactylic hexameters, but other complementary rhythms were also employed. There may have been some repetition of text. Proclus states that the nomos, in contrast to the dithyramb, used the Lydian harmonia and was ‘relaxed in an orderly and magnificent manner and in its rhythms’. Nomoi sung to the accompaniment of an aulos, auloedic nomoi, began to be composed somewhat later by Clonas and Ardalus of Troezen. Pseudo-Plutarch credits Clonas with the invention of the auloedic Prosodion but is uncertain whether to choose Clonas or Ardalus as the first to compose auloedic nomoi.

Nomoi for solo instruments were a later development, undoubtedly reflecting the rising prominence of a professional class of artist. The Pythic Nomos (described in Strabo's Geography, ix.3.10; cf Pollux, Onomasticon, iv.78, 84), an auletic nomos, portrays the contest of Apollo and the Python in an extended five-part composition for solo aulos, the music itself highly descriptive or evocative. Auletic nomoi and the fourth type, the kitharistic nomos, were introduced at the Pythian games in 586 and 558 bce (Pausanias, Description of Greece, x.7.4). Pseudo-Plutarch names Polymnestus of Colophon, Olympus the Mysian, Mimnermus and Sacadas of Argos as particularly skilled composer-performers and refers to the famous Polykephalos Nomos (also attested by Pindar, Pythian, xii), which he is uncertain whether to attribute to Olympus or Crates; the Chariot Nomos, attributed to Olympus; the Cradias Nomos, attributed to Mimnermus; the Trimere Nomos, attributed perhaps to Sacadas, perhaps to Clonas; and the Orthios Nomos, associated with Polymnestus. According to the Aristotelian Problems (xix.15), the nomos was intended for virtuoso performers, and as their function was to imitate and exert themselves, it had become long and diverse, with the music constantly changing to suggest the dramatic action of narrative. Since instrumental nomoi, at least in some cases, were based on well-known subjects such as the contest between Apollo and the Python, familiarity assisted listeners in identifying the actions suggested by the music.

Nomoi were extended compositions, organized in several sections. Pollux's Onomasticon (iv.66) names seven parts to the Terpandrean nomos: eparcha, metarcha, katatropa, metakatatropa, omphalos, sphragis and epilogos. Each of these terms is based on common terminology used in other contexts: eparcha and metarcha suggest that the nomos begins with a statement of rules, perhaps the basic tuning and rhythm to be employed; the katatropa and metakatatropa suggest a first and second development on this material; the omphalos must be the central point of the composition; the sphragis is surely the conclusion in which the poet refers to himself and ‘seals’ the composition; and the epilogos is some sort of coda.

Unlike some other technical musical terms, nomos is also a term of general usage that means ‘law’, ‘custom’ or ‘convention’. This complex of meanings enables Plato to develop several musico-political analogies in the Republic (iv, 424c: ‘One must be cautious about changing to a new type of music as this risks a change in the whole; the modes [tropoi] of music are never moved without movement of the greatest constitutional laws’) and the Laws (vii, 799e: ‘our songs are our laws’). The relationship between civic law and the nomos may be more than a literary device employed by Plato. The Aristotelian Problems (xix.28) propose that the nomoi were so called because the preliterate peoples set their laws to music for mnemonic purposes, while Aristides Quintilianus (On Music, ii.6) states that the nomoi were certain pieces established by law for use in specific private festivities and public sacred feasts. Pseudo-Plutarch (1133b–c), by contrast, simply asserts that the term was applied to certain pieces because they were based on a particular tuning that had to be maintained throughout. In any case, the term conveys the sense of a piece of music fixed and unalterable.

Of all the composers of nomoi, Timotheus of miletus is the best known and most notorious. The surviving portion of his Persians, which won the competition at the Athenian games (probably some time between 420 and 416 bce), affords a clear view of the literary style and character of the later nomos. As an account of the battle of Salamis, the nomos provides opportunity for vivid description, word-play and the capacity of the Greek language for onomatopoeia. Two short passages may be taken as typical:

… and the sea was shingled o'er with swarming bodies reft of the sunlight by failure of breath, and with the same were the shores heavy laden; while others sat stark and naked on the island-beaches, and with cries and floods of tears, wailing and beating their breasts, were whelmed in mournful lamentation, and called upon the land of their fathers, saying: ‘Ho, ye tree-tressèd dells of Mysia, save me out of this place to whence the winds did bring us; else never shall the dust receive my body. (104–19; Edmonds, p.317)

The rhythm shifts constantly from line to line, and even within the lines, evoking the anguish, disorder and tempestuousness of the scene. The language itself changes in sound from the sibilants of the narrative passage, which describes the sea and the shore with 17 sigmas in ten lines, to the chattering cry of the defeated, which contains thirteen dental mutes – taus, deltas and thetas – in five lines. In the second passage, Timotheus demeans the Persian enemy by having him speak barbarously in a fractured syntax when he is captured by a Greek soldier:

…then writhing and clasping the foeman's knees he would thus inweave the Greek and Asian tongues, marring the clear-cut seal-stamp of his mouth with tracking down the Ionian speech: ‘I me to thee how? and what to do? me come again nohow; and now brung me here this way my master; no more, father, me no more come this way to fight, but me not move; me not to you this way, me that way unto Sardy, unto Susa, home Ecbatana. My great God, Artemis, over to Ephesus will protect. (157–73; Edmonds, p.321)

The surviving lines of the papyrus include a section in which the poet claims to have revolutionized music; this is almost certainly an example of a sphragis and an epilogus:

But O Great Healer [i.e. Paean] to whom we cry, exalter of a new-made Muse of the golden kithara, come thou to aid these hymns of mine. For the great and noble and long-lived guide of Sparta, that people that teems with the blossoms of youth, dings me and drives me with the flare of censure, for that I dishonour the more ancient music with my new hymns. Yet do I keep no man, be he young or old or my own compeer, from these hymns of mine; 'tis the debauchers of the ancient music, them I keep off, the tune torturers who shriek as long, and shrill as loud, as any common crier. In the beginning did Orpheus, son of Calliopè, beget the tortoise-shell lyre of the varied Muses on Mount Pieria; and after him, great Terpander, born of Aeolian Lesbos at Antissa, yoked the Muse in ten songs; and now Timotheus opens the Muse's chambered treasury of many hymns and gives kithara-playing new life with eleven-stroke metres and rhythms, nursling he of Miletus, the town of a twelve-walled people that is chief among the Achaeans.
But to this city I pray thee come, thou far-darting Pythian with the gifts of prosperity and a peace abounding in orderliness for an untroubled people. (215–53; Edmonds, pp.323–25, adapted)

According to Satyrus's Life of Euripides, the prelude to this nomos was written by Euripides himself, and it has generally been supposed that Timotheus influenced Euripides' style. If this is so, and if the surviving musical fragments from Euripides' Orestes and Iphigenia in Aulis are accurate representations of the original music for these plays, they may also provide some evidence for Timotheus's musical style. This would have been a style in which the music itself filled out rhythmic patterns not immediately apparent in the text, modulated frequently and in some cases to rather distantly related tonoi, and made use of disjunct leaps and unusual chromatic inflection. Unfortunately, the music for the Persae does not survive.

The hymn, paean, nomos and dithyramb represent the four most important musico-poetic types in Greek culture. As central to the celebration of the gods in various religious and civic festivals, they provided both a means for the cultural heritage to be preserved, interpreted and communicated, and a mirror of the current social and religious structure of Greek life. This dual role led to an ostensible paradox: each generation regarded the musico-poetic types as sufficiently important to be employed, expanded and developed, while at the same time viewing innovations and departures from tradition with suspicion. In fact this is not paradoxical; rather, it is an expression of the vitality and resilience of these compositional types, continuing over many centuries.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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THOMAS J. MATHIESEN