Αλύπιος, (3ος ή 4ος αι. μ.Χ.)· θεωρητικός της μουσικής. Η εποχή του τοποθετείται από τον Meibom στον 2ο αι. μ.Χ., και από τον Carl v. Jan (Philologus 30, σ. 402, 4) μετά τον Πτολεμαίο (2ος αι. μ.Χ.). Τίποτε δεν είναι γνωστό για τη ζωή του. Το βιβλίο του Εισαγωγή Μουσική, που αποτελείται αποκλειστικά από πίνακες των ελληνικών κλιμάκων (15 "
τόνοι") στα τρία
γένη
με την
παρασημαντική τους, είναι η κύρια πηγή της γνώσης μας για την αρχαία ελληνική
σημειογραφία και τις κλίμακες.
Η Εισαγωγή εκδόθηκε πρώτα, στο Leyden, εκδ. Elzevir, με σχόλια από τον
Ιωάννη Μεούρσιο (Johannes Meursius), μαζί με τα Αρμονικά Στοιχεία του Αριστόξενου και το Εγχειρίδιον (Αρμονικής Εγχειρίδιον) του Νικόμαχου (
Aristoxenus, Nicomachus, Alypius, auctores musici antiquissimi, Lugduni 1616, σσ. 95-124). Ο Athanasius Kircher δημοσίευσε στην έκδοσή του
Musurgia Universalis (Ρώμη 1650, τόμ. Ι, απέναντι στη σελ. 540) πίνακες της ελληνικής παρασημαντικής κατά τον Αλύπιο. Αλλά η πρώτη αξιόπιστη έκδοση της Εισαγωγής του Αλύπιου έγινε από τον
Marco Meibom, με λατινική μετάφραση, στη μεγάλη έκδοσή του Antiquae musicae auctores septem, graece et latine, Amsterdam 1652, τόμ. I, iv, σσ. 1-65.
Μια πιο πρόσφατη και πολύ αξιόλογη έκδοση του ελληνικού κειμένου έγινε από τον
Carl v. Jan (1836-1898) στο
Musici scriptores Graeci (Λιψία 1895· η Εισαγωγή βρίσκεται στο VIII, σσ. 367-406). Η Εισαγωγή μεταφράστηκε στα γαλλικά από τον Ch. Emile Ruelle σύμφωνα με το ελληνικό κείμενο του Meibom και δημοσιεύτηκε (χωρίς το ελληνικό κείμενο) με σχόλια στη σειρά του Alypius, Gaudence et Bacchius l'Ancien (Παρίσι 1895, σσ. 1-48· στις σσ. 141-2 περιέχεται πλήρης πίνακας της ελληνικής σημειογραφίας· η σειρά των τριών Ελλήνων θεωρητικών είναι ο αρ. V στην έκδοσή του Collection des auteurs grecs relatifs a la musique, 1870-1895).
Σημείωση: To όνομα του Αλύπιου αναφέρεται στους Βίους των Σοφιστών του Ευνάπιου (έκδ. Loeb, σ. 373 κε.), σε σχέση με τον Ιάμβλιχο· επίσης, αναφέρεται από τον Κασσιόδωρο (Migne PL 70, στήλ. 1272). Βλ. Ε. Graf: Alypios, Pauly RE II, στήλ. 1710-1711, Στουτγάρδη 1894.
http://www.musipedia.gr/
Υ.Γ. Από ελληνικής πλευράς, έχει εκδώσει τη Μουσική Εισαγωγή του Αλυπίου σχολιασμένη ο π. Αθανάσιος Σιαμάκης (Πρέσπες 1985)
[''Ο Αθανάσιος Κίρχερ, ιησουίτης ιερέας και λόγιος (με τη σφραγίδα του έσχατου εκπροσώπου της Αναγέννησης), γεννήθηκε το 1601 στην Γκάιζα του Αβαείου της Φούλντα (Θουριγγία) κι ετελεύτησε το 1680 στη Ρώμη. Ως καλός ιησουίτης διδάχτηκε την ελληνική και την εβραϊκή γλώσσα, ακολούθησε επιστημονικές και ανθρωπιστικές σπουδές στην Κολωνία και το 1628 χειροτονήθηκε στο Μάιντς. Ο Τριακονταετής Πόλεμος τον εξανάγκασε να εγκαταλείψει τη Γερμανία για να βρεί καταφύγιο στη Ρώμη, η οποία αποτελούσε κέντρο σπουδών και πνευματικού πολιτισμού και συνάμα αρχείο γνώσεων που συσσωρεύονταν από τα δίκτυα των ιησουιτών ιεραποστόλων. Ο Κίρχερ είχε ευρύ πεδίο ερεύνης (γεωγραφία, αστρονομία, μαθηματικά, γλώσσες, ιατρική και μουσική) το οποίο συντηρούσε και μια μυστικιστική θεώρηση της φύσης και των απόκρυφων δυνάμεων. Για παράδειγμα, δεν δίστασε να κατέλθει με σχοινιά στον κρατήρα του Βεζούβιου για να κάνει επιτόπια έρευνα μετά απο κάποια έκρηξη. Οι ιστορικοί της σκέψης δεν του αποδίδουν καμιά πρωτότυπη ανακάλυψη. Πλην όμως η θέση του στην ιστορία του πνεύματος σχετίζεται με το καταγραφικό του έργο. Συνέγραψε 44 βιβλία και 2.000 χειρόγραφα και επιστολές του. Επίσης, ίδρυσε μια από τις πρώτες συλλογές φυσικής ιστορίας.'']
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Alypius [Alupios]
(fl 4th century CE). Greek writer on music. His Introduction to Music (Eisagōgē mousikē) contains the most complete tabulation of ancient Greek musical notation. He is mentioned by Cassiodorus (Institutiones, ii.5) in the list of important Greek musical authors together with Ptolemy and Euclid (i.e. Cleonides). Alypius’s treatise may have been known to Boethius, who included notational symbols for the Lydian tonos in all three genera (De institutione musica, iv.3–4), but they are not attributed to him and could have been derived from other sources. Nothing is known of his life. The principal reasons for assigning such a late floruit have to do with the name (which is not otherwise attested before the 4th century), the content of the opening prose section (see below) and the general lack of interest in musical notation shown by writers securely dated before the 3rd century ce. Writers such as Aristides quintilianus, Gaudentius and Bacchius, who did include tables of notation within their treatises, can almost certainly be dated no earlier than the late 3rd century ce.
Alypius’s treatise is preserved in 34 manuscripts, the earliest of which is I-Vnm gr.app.cl.VI/3 (RISM, B/XI, 270), dating from the 12th century. It begins with a short section in prose, the content of which reflects the later Aristoxenian tradition of Cleonides, Aristides Quintilianus and Gaudentius rather than the writings of Aristoxenus himself. According to this introductory section, music (mousikē) embraces the three disciplines of harmonics (harmonikē), rhythmics (ruthmikē) and metrics (metrikē). Harmonics, first in order and primary, is concerned with critically and perceptively determining musical notes and the differences among them (this definition recalls the opening sentence of Ptolemy’s Harmonics). Adhering to tradition, Alypius lists the seven standard topics of harmonics: notes, intervals, scales, genera, tonoi, modulation and melic composition; he then states that he will proceed to represent the 15 tropoi and tonoi, beginning with the Lydian, in two sets of notational symbols (sēmeia), one for text (lexis) and one for instruments (krousis). These have come to be known in modern scholarship as the vocal and instrumental notations. Alypius concludes the prose section by naming the stationary and movable notes, together with incomplete observations about their positions within the pyknon (a group of three notes in the enharmonic and chromatic genera of the tetrachord; see Greece, §I). All this would seem to be a very close (but imperfect) paraphrase of material appearing in the treatises of Cleonides and Aristides Quintilianus.
According to Cleonides (§12) and Aristides Quintilianus (i.10), Aristoxenus had identified 13 tonoi, but Aristides Quintilianus adds that the ‘younger theorists’ expanded the number to 15. In this formulation, each of the five traditional tonoi (Lydian, Aeolian, Phrygian, Iastian and Dorian) is joined by a low (hypo-) and high (hyper-) form. Alypius follows this ‘younger’ tradition in his tabular representations of the tonoi: the table for each traditional tonos is immediately joined by tables for the low and high forms (e.g. Lydian, Hypolydian, Hyperlydian, Aeolian, Hypoaeolian, Hyperaeolian etc.). In each case, Alypius provides the name of the note (proslambanomenos, hypatē hypatōn etc.); a short description of the shapes of the two notational symbols (e.g. defective zeta and horizontal tau), vocal and instrumental; and the notational symbols themselves. The first 15 tables provide the notation for the tonoi in the diatonic genus; the cycle is then repeated for the chromatic genus. It was apparently intended that the cycle be repeated a third time for the enharmonic genus, but the tables are imperfect for the Aeolian tonoi and break off altogether in the middle of the Hyperphrygian tonos. Moreover, with the exception of the tables for the Lydian tonos, the symbols in the surviving tables for the enharmonic genus are identical to those in the corresponding tables for the chromatic genus. These general defects appear in the earliest surviving manuscript (see Mathiesen, 1988, p.712) and are substantially repeated in all other manuscripts and later editions of the treatise.
If a conventional pitch is applied to the notation, each of the tonoi following the lowest (Hypodorian) is one semitone higher overall, and the proslambanomenoi of the lowest and highest (Hyperlydian) tonoi span an octave and a tone. The overall span between the proslambanomenos of the lowest tonos and the nētē hyperbolaiōn of the highest is three octaves and a tone. This relationshhip among the tonoi is not shown in the layout of Alypius’s tables, but it does appear in Aristides Quintilianus’s diagram laid out ‘akin to a wing’ (see Mathiesen, 1983, p.91).
Although the tables of Alypius do not make it immediately apparent, the symbols for both sets of notation follow a triadic pattern in which the first symbol represents a certain pitch; the second, the pitch raised by a diesis (chromatic or enharmonic); and the third, the pitch raised by two dieses (the dieses might be as small as quarter-tones or as large as semitones). In the vocal notation the triads are formed of three-letter groups (e.g. alpha-beta-gamma, delta-epsilon-zeta etc.), while in the instrumental notation they are formed of a basic shape rotated 90° and 180° (or sometimes reflected) around a central axis. The basic set of symbols for the instrumental notation, which would seem to be the earlier, accounts for two octaves (A–a′; all the pitches in the following description and in the chart should be taken merely as conventional, not as indicative of any absolute pitch) of the span of three octaves and a tone; the upper five symbol-triads (together with zeta) are repetitions with the addition of an apostrophe to indicate the highest pitches (b′–g′′); and two additional symbol triads are added at the bottom for the lowest pitches (F and G). The basic set of symbols for the vocal notation, on the other hand, makes use of the Ionic alphabet and thus must not be much older than the 5th century bce. With only 24 characters, this set accounts for but a single octave (f–f′) in the centre of the overall span. In order to extend this pattern to match the two octaves of the instrumental notation, the two final triads tau-upsilon-phi and chi-psi-omega are inverted and added above the basic set (for g′ and a′), while the symbols of the first five triads are inverted or otherwise made ‘defective’ and placed below the basic set (for A–e). Finally, just as in the instrumental notation, the upper five symbol-triads (together with the inverted omega) are repetitions with the addition of an apostrophe to indicate the highest pitches (b′–g″), and two additional symbol triads are added at the bottom for the lowest pitches (F and G).
It is not possible to represent on a modern staff the subtle gradations of pitch (and functions of pitch within a melodic complex), but a very rough idea of the pitch inflections indicated within each symbol-triad may be gathered from the display in ex.1 (see Henderson, 358; as always the pitch is merely conventional). Pattern I represents the vocal notation; pattern II, the instrumental. In each case the symbols in row 1 represent the staff pitch; those of row 2, the pitch raised by an enharmonic or chromatic diesis; and those of row 3, the pitch raised by two enharmonic or chromatic dieses.
Ex.1
Descriptions of the notational symbols are late, but the symbols themselves appear in surviving pieces of ancient Greek music as early as the 3rd century bce. A notational system of some sort was certainly in place even earlier. Aristoxenus referred to notation (Harmonics, ii.39–40), dismissing it as useless to scientific inquiry, and for the next several centuries theorists ignored it. Falling in the province of the practitioner rather than the theorist, musical notation must have been developed and passed on as a skill together with other details of instrumental technique and performing practice. Some pieces of ancient Greek music show a combination of vocal and instrumental notation, while others are predominantly in a single form. In some, notational symbols appear that are not represented in any of the theoretical treatments. Performers no doubt learnt how to interpret these special combinations as part of their training. As these traditional skills began to fade in late antiquity, a few writers undertook to codify the notational symbols. Alypius was the most systematic, and while his tables are incomplete and leave certain questions unanswered, their symbols do accord overall with the surviving notation, enabling it to be read for the most part in a sensible and musically coherent manner.
After Cassiodorus, Alypius’s treatise, unlike many of the other ancient Greek treatises, seems to have been generally ignored by later writers until Girolamo Mei and Vincenzo Galilei. Shortly thereafter, in 1616, the treatise (as it appears in NL-Lu Scaligerianus gr.47: RISM, B/XI, 284) was first published in Greek without the notational symbols. With the publication of Meibom’s improved edition of 1652, the treatise became widely known.
Writings
J. van Meurs, ed.: ‘Alupiou eisagōgē mousikē’, Aristoxenus, Nicomachus, Alypius: auctores musices antiquissimi, hactenus non editi (Leiden, 1616), 93–124, 186–96
M. Meibom, ed. and trans.: ‘Alypii Introductio musica’, Antiquae musicae auctores septem (Amsterdam, 1652/R), i [separately paginated; with parallel Lat. trans.]
K. von Jan, ed.: ‘Alypi Isagoge’, Musici scriptores graeci (Leipzig, 1895/R), 357–406
C.E. Ruelle, trans.: Alypius et Gaudence … Bacchius l’Ancien (Paris, 1895)
L. Zanoncelli, ed. and trans.: ‘Alipio: Introduzione alla musica’, La manualistica musicale greca (Milan, 1990), 371–463 [incl. commentary]
Bibliography
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A.J.H. Vincent: Notice sur divers manuscrits grecs relatifs à la musique, avec une traduction française et des commentaires (Paris, 1847), 73–169
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C. Sachs: ‘Die griechische Instrumentalnotenschrift’, ZMw, vi (1923–4), 289–301
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D. Jourdan-Hemmerdinger: ‘La date de la “notation vocale” d’Alypios’, Philologus, cxxv (1981), 299–303
T.J. Mathiesen, trans.: Aristides Quintilianus on Music in Three Books (New Haven, CT, 1983)
T.J. Mathiesen: Ancient Greek Music Theory: a Catalogue Raisonné of Manuscripts, RISM, B/XI (1988)
M.L. West: ‘Analecta musica’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, xcii (1992), 36–42
M.L. West: Ancient Greek Music (Oxford, 1992), 254–65
T.J. Mathiesen: Apollo’s Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Lincoln, NE, 1999), 593–607
Thomas J. Mathiesen
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