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Musical activity in Sikyon is lost in time and one
can say that the innovations they made in the art are greater than any
other.
According to the Sikyonian Anagraphe (a
recording document of history especially art) the innovation of singing
with a kithara was attributed to Amphion of
Sikyon, as for the solo kithara playing to Lysander
of Sikyon who was also the inventor of chorus and changing one
instrument with another during the performance of music and various
musical aulos tones that could be played with kithara.
The first orchestra playing (enaulon kitharisin)
originated here by the pupils of Epigonos,
who were performing with aulos, kithara, epigonion,
singing, etc. Epigonos, an immigrant from Ambrakia who lived at Sikyon
and opened a school of music, was also the inventor of Epigonion
(epi gonatos) a kind of kithara with forty strings that
was placed and played at one's knees. Another innovator was Ibykos
who made the musical instrument Sambyke. The
above mentioned artists lived more or less at the times of Kleisthenes,
beginning of the 6th century BC.
At the same time lived the famous Pythokritos
of Sikyon, an Olympic victor in aulos (flute) who won six consecutive
victories in the Pythian games from 574 - 554 BC. A slab at Olympia that
was erected in his honor, has the inscription:
"This is the monument of the flute-player Pythocritos,
the son of Kallinicos".
The great innovations of Sikyon in music were parallel with dance
innovations. A local dance known as Aleter was
a sober kind of dance. Another dance, the one Hippokleides danced at the
feast given by Kleisthenes and lost the hand of his daughter Agariste,
was the comic and uncontrolled Kordax.
The dances which involved the throwing of a ball, as for example the one
mentioned by Homer in his Odyssey, that has Nausika dancing with
other girls with a ball, was a Sikyonian innovation. Sikyon had schools
teaching dancing (chorodidaskaleia). |
