Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI THE LYRICS PREAMBLE IF we were to listen to Aristophanes, it would not take long to pass judgment on Euripides' lyrics. We should feel nothing but scorn for those short verses, full of repetitions and interjections, whose pretentious and unoriginal music suggests successively " songs of the banquet, Carian flutes, dance-tunes, and funeral dirges," and which deserve no better accompaniment than that of " the castanets."1 But if we remember that approbation, and approbation long continued, is evidence of indisputable worth in case of products of the mind, we shall be slow to give credence to Aristophanes. The anecdote of the Greeks in Sicily who gave a bit of bread and water as alms to the Athenians who were able to sing to them passages from Euripides might, if it were isolated, be set down to the credulity of Plutarch.2 But we read of a writer of the middle comedy, Axionicus, who made fun of the music lovers who were crazy about the tunes of our poet and did not wish to hear any others.2 And later we have Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who stops to remark upon the way in which the first words of the parodos of the Orestes were sung.4 Finally Lucian relates the lively story of the performance of the Andromeda at Abdera,6 and speaks of the monody of the Hecuba as a passage that everybody must know from having heard it in the theatre. The long vogue which these citations indicate7 could not be accounted for had not the songs which enjoyed it been marked by poetic and musical qualities--perhaps chiefly musical--that delighted both mind and ear. It also necessitates the conclusion that Euripides brought the technique of dramatic music to such perfection that after him this music was no longer susceptible of important changes or...
