Attic relief (4th century BCE) depicting an aulos player and his family standing before Dionysos and a female consort, with theatrical masks displayed above.

The dithyramb (διθύραμβος – dithurambos) was an ancient Greek hymn sung and danced in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility; the term was also 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] Plato also remarks in the Republic (394c) that dithyrambs are the clearest example of poetry in which the poet is the only speaker.

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[link]

Dithyrambs were sung by choruses at Delos, but the literary fragments that have survived are largely Athenian. In Athens dithyrambs were sung by a Greek chorus of up to fifty men or boys dancing in circular formation (there is no certain evidence that they may have originally been dressed as satyrs) and probably accompanied by the aulos. They would normally relate some incident in the life of Dionysus.

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 Dionysiac 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—as a public monument to commemorate the victory.

The earliest mention of dithyramb found by Sir Arthur Wallace Pickard-Cambridge,^[6] is in a fragment of Archilochus, who flourished in the first half of the seventh century BCE: "I know how to lead the fair song of the Lord Dionysus, the dithyramb, when my wits are fused with wine." As a literary composition for chorus, their inspiration is unknown, although it was likely Greek, as Herodotus explicitly speaks of Arion of Lesbos as "the first of men we know to have composed the dithyramb and named it and produced it in Corinth".^[7]

The word dithyramb is of unknown but probably non-Greek derivation.^[8] 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.^[9] 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.^[10] 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.

In the later 5th century BCE, the dithyramb "became a favorite vehicle for the musical experiments of the poets of the 'new music'."^[11] This movement included the poets Timotheus of Miletus, Cinesias, Melanippides, and Philoxenus of Cythera. 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). The title is similarly uncommon in Western classical music, notwithstanding a number of notable examples. Franz Schubert wrote a song for bass voice (D 801, published in 1826) on a text Dithyrambe, by Friedrich Schiller (1796). Friedrich Nietzsche composed a set of Dionysos-Dithyramben in 1889. Nikolai Medtner composed several dithyrambs, including a set of three for solo piano as his Opus 10; the final movement of his first violin sonata and the last of his Vergessene Weisen also carry the title. Wolfgang Rihm composed a 30-minute work, Concerto, in 2000, with the subtitle Dithyrambe and a scoring for string quartet and orchestra.

See also[link]

• Iambus (genre)
• Thriambus

Notes[link]

Sources[link]

• Feder, Lillian. 1998. The Handbook of Classical Literature. New York : Da Capo Press ISBN 0-306-80880-3.
• Francis, Eric David, and Michael J. Vickers. 1990. Image and Idea in Fifth-Century Greece. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-01914-1.
• Harrison, Jane Ellen. 1922. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion. New ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-691-01514-7.
• Harvey, A. E. 1955. "The Classification of Greek Lyric Poetry." Classical Quarterly 5.
• (Aristotle) Richard Janko, trans. 1987. Poetics with Tractatus Coislinianus, Reconstruction of Poetics II and the Fragments of the On Poets. Cambridge: Hackett. ISBN 0-87220-033-7.
• Pickard-Cambridge, Sir Arthur Wallace. 1927. Dithyramb Tragedy and Comedy. Second edition revised by T.B.L. Webster, 1962. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-19-814227-7.
• —. 1946. The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens.
• —. 1953. The Dramatic Festivals of Athens.
• Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane. 2003. Tragedy and Athenian Religion. Oxford: Oxford UP.
• Trypanis, Constantine Athanasius. 1981. Greek Poetry from Homer to Seferis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-81316-9.
• Wiles, David. 1991. The Masked Menander: Sign and Meaning in Greek and Roman Performance. New ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ISBN 0-521-54352-5.

External links[link]

Look up dithyramb in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Bacchylides, "The Theseus Dithyramb" – composed c. 500 BCE

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2008)

Lux Occulta (which is Latin for "hidden light" or "the secrets of light") is a Polish avant-garde metal band, founded in late 1994. Their work, also strongly influenced by progressive metal and black metal, commonly incorporates elaborate arrangements often featuring multiple sections and unpredictable time changes.

Biography[link]

The band was started when guitarists Peter and G'Ames, formerly of Blaspherion, asked Jaro.Slav, the vocalist of Haemorrhage, to join their new project. Jackie (bass guitar) and Aemil (drums) joined the band few weeks later, followed by keyboard player U'reck after the band's first rehearsal session. After the recording in 1996 of the band's first full album, Forever Alone, Immortal, Aemil was replaced by drummer Kriss. The band's second album, Dionysos, followed in 1997. In 1998, after the release of Maior Arcana, G'Ames and Jackie were asked to leave the band; their replacements were guitarist Vogg and bassist Martin, also of the Polish death metal band Decapitated. A lengthy recording succession with the new lineup yielded My Guardian Anger, which was released in 1999. The latter half of 1999 was plagued with accidents, though, as Kriss suffered from a broken arm, leading his doctors to question whether he'd ever be able to play drums again, and U'reck broke his leg shortly thereafter, forcing the band to retire from touring for several months. After several months' hiatus from performing, the band played Poland's Metalmania festival in 2000 alongside acts such as Opeth, Behemoth and Tiamat, which drew the attention of the Portuguese label Maquiavel Music Entertainment. The next month they were signed to the label for a two-album deal, and the first of their albums on MME, The Mother and the Enemy, appeared the following year. The band has been mostly dormant since 2002, although they posted a message to their MySpace several years ago indicating that they were working on new material and looking for a new drummer; however, nothing has been heard since.

In 2012 it was announced that Lux Occulta has begin recording new album.^[2]

Line-up[link]

• Jarosław "Jaro.Slav" Szubrycht - vocals (1994–2002, 2011-)
• Jerzy "U.reck" Głód - keyboard (1994–2002, 2011-)
• Wacław "Vogg" Kiełtyka - electric guitar (1998–2002, 2011-)

Former Members[link]

• "Peter" - electric guitar (1994–2001)
• Rafał "Kastor" Kastory - electric guitar (2001–2002)
• "G. Ames" - electric guitar (1994–1998)
• "Jackie" - bass guitar (1994–1998)
• Marcin "Martin" Rygiel - bass (1998–2002)
• "Aemil" - drums (1994–1996)
• Krzysztof "Kriss" Szantula - drums (1996–2001)

Discography[link]

• The Forgotten Arts (demo) (1995)
• Forever Alone, Immortal (1996)
• Dionysos (1997)
• Maior Arcana (1998)
• My Guardian Anger (1999)
• The Mother and the Enemy (2001)

References[link]

1. ^ http://www.myspace.com/luxocculta
2. ^ http://www.machina.pl/newsy/id,2418/Decapitated-Kolysanki-i-heavy-metal.html

External links[link]

• Official site ("Under heavy construction")
• Lux Occulta on Myspace

This article about a Polish band or other musical ensemble is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Jason Eckardt (b. 17 May 1971, Princeton, NJ) is an American composer. He began his musical life playing guitar in heavy metal and jazz bands and abruptly moved to composing after discovering the music of Anton Webern.^[1]

Compositions[link]

Atonal and microtonal harmony, intricate rhythms, highly polyphonic textures and large-scale transformational processes^[2] are prevalent in Eckardt’s compositions. Allan Kozinn of The New York Times wrote, “[Eckardt’s] music celebrates harmonic prickliness, rhythmic complexity and a density of ideas.”^[3] Though Eckardt has been associated with the New Complexity movement, he is also influenced by American composers Milton Babbitt and Elliott Carter.^[4]

Major works include After Serra (2000) for chamber ensemble, Tongues (2001) for soprano and chamber ensemble, Reul na Coille (2002) for percussion and orchestra, Trespass (2005) for piano and chamber orchestra and the Undersong cycle (2002–2008), a series of four chamber works (A way [tracing], 16, Aperture, The Distance (This)) that, when played together without pause, form a concert-length supercomposition.

Some of Eckardt's compositions are inspired by extramusical subjects, such as extraordinary rendition (Rendition), the sculptures of Richard Serra (After Serra),^[5][6] W.S. Merwin's poem "Echoes" (Echoes' White Veil)^[7] and George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address (16).^[8] Subject, a work for string quartet, uses special concert lighting to recreate the conditions used to interrogate military detainees.^[9] Eckardt has also written about the influence of research in cognitive psychology on his compositional techniques.^[10]

Eckardt has received commissions for his work from several major institutions and performers including Carnegie Hall,^[11] Tanglewood,^[12] the Koussevitzky Foundation (1999, 2011),^[13] the Guggenheim Museum, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University (1996, 2008),^[14] Chamber Music America,^[15] the New York State Music Fund, Meet the Composer,^[16] the Oberlin Conservatory and percussionist Evelyn Glennie.^[17] His works have been programmed internationally by festivals including the Festival d'Automne a Paris, IRCAM-Resonances, ISCM World Music Days (1999, 2000), Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Voix Nouvelles, Musik im 20. Jahrhundert, Musikhost, Currents in Musical Thought-Seoul, New Consortium, International Review of Contemporary Music, Festival of New American Music and the International Bartok Festival. Eckardt’s catalog is published by Carl Fischer Music.^[18]

Career[link]

Eckardt has taught composition, theory and musicology at Columbia University, the Oberlin Conservatory, New York University, the University of Illinois, Rutgers University, and Northwestern University. His is also the co-founder of Ensemble 21, the contemporary music chamber ensemble based in New York City. He is currently Associate Professor of composition at City University of New York’s Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College and Graduate Center.

Awards[link]

In 2004, Eckardt was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.^[19] Eckardt has also earned fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, Fondation Royaumont, the MacDowell and Millay Colonies, the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, the Fritz Reiner Center for Contemporary Music, the Composers Conference at Wellesley, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music. Eckardt’s compositions have received awards from the League of Composers/ISCM (National Prize), Deutschen Musikrat-Stadt Wesel (Symposium NRW Prize), ASCAP (Morton Gould Award), the University of Illinois (Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award) and Columbia University (Rapoport Prize).

Education[link]

Eckardt attended Berklee College of Music, first as a guitar performance major before switching to composition, eventually earning a BA (1992). He continued his studies at Columbia University, principally with Jonathan Kramer, and earned MA (1994) and DMA (1998) degrees. He attended masterclasses with Milton Babbitt, James Dillon, Brian Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey, and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

List of compositions[link]

• Multiplicities (1993) for solo flute
• Flux (1994/95) for alto flute and ‘cello
• Excelsior ab Intra (1994) for soprano, 2 countertenors, baritone
• A Harvest of Thorns (1995) for two guitars
• Echoes' White Veil (1996) for solo piano
• Tangled Loops (1996) for soprano saxophone and piano
• Cuts (1996) for solo piano
• Paths of Resistance (1997) for solo guitar
• Polarities (1998) for chamber ensemble
• Transience (1999) for solo marimba
• A Glimpse Retraced (1999) for piano and chamber ensemble
• After Serra (2000) for chamber ensemble
• Dithyramb (2001) for solo soprano
• Equilibrium (2001) for voice and guitar
• Tongues (2001) for soprano and chamber ensemble
• Performance (2001) for mezzo-soprano and piano
• Reul na Coille (2002) for solo percussion and orchestra
• 16 (2003) for amplified flute and string trio
• A Fractured Silence (2004) for saxophone quartet
• Mirror-glass skyscrapers (2004) for mezzo-soprano and piano
• Trespass (2005) for piano solo and chamber orchestra
• Rendition (2006) for bass clarinet and piano
• Sweet Creature (2006) for solo bodhrán
• A way [tracing] (2006) for solo ‘cello
• Still (2007) for solo baritone saxophone
• Aperture (2007) for chamber ensemble
• The Distance (This) (2008) for soprano and chamber ensemble
• Riddle (2009) for piano solo
• Testing Against (2009) for chamber ensemble
• Subject (2011) for string quartet with lighting

Discography[link]

• Jason Eckardt: Undersong (featuring A way [tracing], 16, Aperture, The Distance (This)), Mode 234.
• Jason Eckardt: Out of Chaos (featuring After Serra, Tangled Loops, A Glimpse Retraced, Polarities), Mode 137.
• Prism Saxophone Quartet: Dedication (featuring A Fractured Silence), Innova 800.
• Amy Briggs: Tangos for Piano (featuring Tango Clandestino), Revello RR7808.
• Jean Kopperud: Extreme Measures (featuring Rendition), Albany 1217/18.
• Claire Chase: Aliento (featuring 16), New Focus FCR 109.
• Nathan Nabb: Tangled Loops (featuring Tangled Loops), Amp 12.
• Michael Lipsey: So Long, Thanks... (featuring Sweet Creature), Capstone CPS-8773.
• Makoto Nakura: Ritual Protocol (featuring Transience), Kleos 5116.
• Nancy Ruffer: Multiplicities (featuring Multiplicities), Metier MSV92063.
• Marilyn Nonken: American Spiritual (featuring Echoes’ White Veil), CRI 877.

Publications[link]

• "Broadening Knowledge: An Interview with Ursula Oppens." American Music Review, 2008.
• "L'élaboration de surface d'ensembles de classes de hauteurs par l'utilisation de paramèters autres que ceux des hauteurs." Musique-Sciences, 2007.
• "Process and Timbral Transformation in 16." Arcana: Musicians on Music, Volume 2. Hips Road. (ed. John Zorn), 2007.
• "Devenir." L'Etincelle/IRCAM. November 2006, Number 1, 2006.
• "Musikhøst Set Udefra." Dansk Musik Tidsskrif, Number 3, 2005.
• "Surface Elaboration of Pitch-Class Sets Using Nonpitched Musical Dimensions." Perspectives of New Music, Volume 43, Number 1, 2005.
• "Listening and Composing." Current Musicology, Issue 67 & 68, 2002.
• "Review of An Introduction to the Music of Milton Babbitt by Andrew Mead." Current Musicology, Issue 63, 2000.

External links[link]

• Official website
• Carl Fisher composer page
• Spotlight on NewMusicBox
• Video excerpt of Claire Chase and the International Contemporary Ensemble performing 16
• Mode Records artist profile
• CUNY Graduate Center faculty page
• Brooklyn College CUNY faculty page

Notes[link]