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The dithyramb (διθύραμβος - dithurambos) was an

Dionysos, the god of wine and fertility; it was also a term used as an epithet of the god.^[1]

Plato, in The Laws, while discussing various kinds of music mentions "the birth of Dionysos, called, I think, the dithyramb."^[2] Plutarch contrasted the dithyramb's wild and ecstatic character with the paean.^[3] According to Aristotle, the dithyramb was the origin of Athenian tragedy.^[4] A wildly enthusiastic speech or piece of writing is still occasionally described as dithyrambic.

History

Dithyrambs were sung by choruses at

Dionysos

.

The ancient Greeks themselves counted among the special criteria of the dithyramb its special rhythm, its aulos accompaniment in Phrygian mode, its highly-wrought vocabulary, its considerable narrative content, and its originally antistrophic character.^[5]

Competitions between groups singing and dancing dithyrambs were an important part of festivals such as the Dionysia and Lenaia. Each tribe would enter two choruses, one of men and one of boys, each under the leadership of a coryphaeus. The results of dithyrambic contests in Athens were recorded with the names of the winning teams and their choregoi recorded but not the poets, most of whom remain unknown. The successful choregos would receive a statue that would be erected—at his own expense—on a public monument to commemorate the victory.

The first dithyrambs were composed in Athens around the seventh century BCE.^{[citation needed]} Their inspiration is unknown, although it was likely non-Greek, as Herodotus explicitly states that the διφύραμβος was first brought to Corinth by Arion of Lesbos; the word is of unknown but probably non-Greek derivation.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). The form soon spread to other Greek city-states, and dithyrambs were composed by the poets Simonides and Bacchylides, as well as Pindar (the only one whose works have survived in anything like their original form).

Later examples were dedicated to other gods but the dithyramb subsequently was developed (traditionally by Arion) into a literary form.^[6] According to Aristotle, Athenian tragedy developed from the dithyramb; the two forms developed alongside one another for some time. The clearest sense of dithyramb as proto-tragedy comes from a surviving dithyramb by Bacchylides, though it was composed after tragedy had already developed fully.^[7] As a dialogue between a solitary singer and a chorus, Bacchylides' dithyramb is suggestive of what tragedy may have resembled before Aeschylus added a second actor. By the 4th century BCE the genre was in decline, although the dithyrambic competitions did not come to an end until well after the Roman takeover of Greece.

Dithyrambic compositions are rare in English; one notable exception is John Dryden's Alexander's Feast (1697). Franz Schubert wrote a song for bass voice called Dithyrambe, D801, published in 1826. Wolfgang Rihm composed a 30-minute work, Concerto, in 2000, with the subtitle Dithyrambe and a scoring for string quartet and orchestra.

Notes

^ Dithurambos, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus. Dithyrambos seems to have arisen out of the hymn: just as paean was both a hymn to and a title of Apollo, Dithyrambos was an epithet of Dionysos as well as a song in his honour; see Harrison (1922, 436).
^ Plato, Laws, iii.700 B.
^ Plutarch, On the Ei at Delphi. Plutarch himself was a priest of Dionysos at Delphi.
^ Aristotle, Poetics (1449a10-15): "Anyway, arising from an improvisatory beginning (both tragedy and comedy—tragedy from the leaders of the dithyramb, and comedy from the leaders of the phallic processions which even now continue as a custom in many of our cities), [tragedy] grew little by little, as [the poets] developed whatever [new part] of it had appeared; and, passing through many changes, tragedy came to a halt, since it had attained its own nature"; see Janko (1987, 6).
^ Harvey (1955). Aristotle records the failed attempt to set it in Dorian mode, in his Politics (8.7).
^ Feder, (1998, 48).
^ See 1 and 2.