Author: Doni, Giovanni Battista - manuscripts of italian music theory ...

was invented after the Chromatic. He imagines that there were three people named
Olympus, and that this Invention was due to the third one, but Plutarch only names
two, to the younger of whom, who, he says, was of Phrygian origin and also the first
flautist, he ascribes that invention on the reports of ancient writers and of Aristoxenus
himself. So shed some light onto this, let us consider something more important about
these two people called Olympus. Alexander, who wrote a collection of facts on
Phrygia and is quoted by Plutarch himself, reports that Olympus was the first one who
imported the Crumati into Greece, namely, the sound of percussion instruments (since
here the word [kroumata] does not mean ‘the plucking of a string’ as the translator
intended, although Suda said of him that he had been [hegemon te genomenos tes
kroumatikes mousikes tes dia ton aulon], namely, that “he became the leader of the
percussive music of music for the flute) and of the Dactylic ones” and that Hyagnis
was the first flute player, then Marsyas, his son, and then Olympus who, as one can
gather from these words of Plutarch, was Marsyas’ son. In that passage, he also writes
that someone called Olympus created a Nomos, which was called Polykephales, for
flute, namely, an Air for flute to be played at the sacrifices in honour of Apollo, which
as called [Polykephale] exactly because [--] it was divided into many sections
or passages, and that this man descended from the first Olympus, pupil of Marsyas,
who composed the Nomoi or the sacred Airs about the Gods. In fact, he was loved so
much by his Teacher, that he learned from him the art of the flute, he established the
Enharmonic Nomoi in Greece, which were still used in his time by the Greeks in their
celebrations of the Gods, that others thought that Grates, pupil of Olympus, was the
author of that Nomos, which Pratinas ascribed to the younger Olympus, while the
Nomos Naumatios was believed to have been composed by the first Olympus, pupil
of Marsyas. I wanted to report all this because, since Plutarch is a very accurate
writer, if ever there was one, and one should not believe that he made a mistake.
Therefore, one can see that the man called Olympus who imported the [kroumata] into
Greece is the same as the son of Marsyas, although he is mentioned in that passage
before Marsyas and Hyagnis, his father and his grandfather, as the fact that he taught
the Greeks the art of the [Kroumata] or of the cymbals, castanets and similar
instruments is not in contradiction with his practising the art of the flute, because in
those ancient times not only among the Greeks, but also among the Jews, those two
types were used in combination with each other. Therefore, there are only two people
called Olympus, rather than three as Zarlino suspected, as, otherwise, Pratinas himself
would have mentioned the three of them and he would not have referred simply to the
younger. It is true, however, that Suda as well writes that there had been two people
called Olympus who played the flute, but the first one was born in Mysia and the
second one was born in Phrygia, but Plutarch’s authority, which is of a different
degree of judgement and knowledge, [--] from whom we know that they
belonged both to the same nation, or rather, to the same family. However, it is possible
that Suda found that an Olympus from Mysia, who was also flutist, existed from some
other author (unless he misunderstood Plutarch), since Mysia and Phrygia are not very
far from each other and the populations, who both used this type of music in
abundance, were not very different, so that many details which were ascribed by a
writer to Olympus from Phrygia would be ascribed by another one to Olympus from
Mysia.
[--] How the Chromatic and Enharmonic Genus was found and on which
occasion.