The term ‘‘lyric’’ refers to lines accompanied by music. The word literally means ‘‘accompanied by the lyre.’’ It will be accepted here, even though it does not correspond to ancient practice. Tragic lyric was sung to the accompaniment of the aulos, a wind instrument; the lyre was rarely used in tragedy (Pickard-Cambridge 1988,165-67; West 1992, 351; see Wilson, chapter 12 in this volume). Choral songs were regularly accompanied by dance, both in tragedy and in other performance contexts. As Plato observed, ‘‘the choric art [choreia] as a whole consists of dance [orchocsis] and song [OdO]’’ (Laws 654b3-4, trans. Barker 1984-89, 1: 141; cf. also 665a3; Herington 1985, 20-31; Pickard-Cambridge 1988, 246-57).
Our manuscripts do not specify which sections of the plays were sung; we can recognize lyric passages by certain linguistic peculiarities and by their meter (Mas-tronarde 2002b, 83 and 103-7). Actors sang one at a time. Some modern scholars believe that in a few instances (the hymn to Artemis in Euripides’ Hippolytus 61-71, and the call for Helen’s murder in Euripides’ Orestes 1302-10), the actor accompanied the chorus, singing to the same text and music.
It is likely that music accompanied some passages that were not sung. This type of accompanied delivery is often called parakataloge (Barker 1984-89, 1: 191 and 234; Hall 1999a, 107; Pickard-Cambridge 1988, 156-64). We do not know whether parakataloge implied some special sort of chanted delivery. It is generally admitted that the aulos accompanied non-lyric anapests, trochaic tetrameters, and some iambic lines within lyric sections. Lyric anapests are differentiated from non-lyric or recitative anapests by certain metrical characteristics. (On these meters see West 1982, 91-95, 121-24.)
World History
