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Apollo and music
• By bringing consonance and agreement among the sounds, the harmony of music is created, just like the balance between the fast and the slow appropriately combined produces its rhythm.
Medicine and music
• All these agreements, in both medicine and music, are ruled by Apollo, who has been called Musegetes (Leader of the Muses) account of his musical and inspiring gift.
Hermes and the lyre
• In the process of recovering the cattle that the newborn Hermes had stolen from him, Apollo discovered the lyre that Hermes had invented and was willing to give Hermes the cattle in exchange for the musical instrument.
• So they did, and Hermes went pasturing the cattle and he now made a shepherd's pipe for himself; and this pipe was so amazing that Apollo desired it too.
• So Apollo offered to give Hermes the golden wand which he used while he herded cattle, but in the bargain Hermes received from Apollo, besides the wand, the art of divining by pebbles.
From 3 to 7
• But although Hermes invented the three-stringed lyre, it was Apollo, some say, who added four more strings to it.
Pythian Games
• What delineated the games at Delphi was that it also included the competition of the courting of the Muses.
• Emphasis on poetry, song, dance, and instrumentals elevated the championship contests to the higher arts.
Musical contest at Delphi
• Musical and poetical contests were held at Delphi among singers and composers, and prizes were offered to the best hymn to the god.
• A crown of laurel was the prize for a Pythian victory on account of the love of Apollo for Daphne who turned into a laurel tree, a branch of which the god made into a wreath for himself.
Winners
• The first contest was won by Chrysothemis, son of Carmanor, the man who purified Apollo after the latter had killed the dragon Python, and the same who received Apollo in his house.
• The third contest was won by Thamyris, son of Philammon and the Nymph Argiope. This Thamyris is the same that loved Hyacinthus, being the first man to fall in love with males.
• He is also known for having engaged in a musical contest with the Muses and when he lost they took both his eyes and his minstrelsy in accordance with what they had agreed before the contest.
• In addition, he is still being punished in the Underworld for having opposed these goddesses.
• Also Eleuther, son of Apollo and Aethusa (daughter of Poseidon and the Pleiad Alcyone), is said to have won a Pythian victory for his loud and sweet voice.
• This musical contest, the youngs performed the peana, a song accompained by the lyre and a dance in honour to Apollo. The performance and the competition belongs to the spere of the maturation rites.
• For this reason the inventor of the lyre is Hermes, a god connected with the rites of passages and the boundary-crossing rites.
Dionysus and Apollo at Delphi
• Apollo is traditionally opposed to Dionysus by the scholars. But Apollo seems not in conflict with the brother. But they have also a lot of thinks in common.
• For both music, divine mania and prophecy are very important: they rule different aspects of the same things.
• Plutarc, that was initiated at the Delphic Mysteries, wrote that "Delphi belong to Dionysus not less than to Apollo”.
• Some sources tells us that first the also the oracle was of Dionysos.
• When the Thiads (Bacchantes of Dephi) went to the Mountains to "wake and call the god”, the priests of Apollo help them singing the peana.
• And in wintertime, the period sacred to Dionysus, the people sung the dythiramb, the sacred songs of Dionysus.
