Stasimon () in

Greek tragedy Greek tragedy is a form of theatre from Ancient Greece and Greek inhabited Anatolia. It reached its most significant form in Athens in the 5th century BC, the works of which are sometimes called Attic tragedy. Greek tragedy is widely believed t ...

is a stationary song, composed of

strophe A strophe () is a poetic term originally referring to the first part of the ode in Ancient Greek tragedy, followed by the antistrophe and epode. The term has been extended to also mean a structural division of a poem containing stanzas of varyi ...

s and antistrophes and performed by the chorus in the

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

(, "place where the chorus dances").

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ph ...

states in the '' Poetics'' (1452b23) that each choral song (or ''melos'') of a tragedy is divided into two parts: the '' parodos'' () and the ''stasimon''. He defines the latter as "a choral song without

anapaest An anapaest (; also spelled anapæst or anapest, also called antidactylus) is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. In classical quantitative meters it consists of two short syllables followed by a long one; in accentual stress meters it consist ...

s or

trochaic In English poetic metre and modern linguistics, a trochee () is a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. But in Latin and Ancient Greek poetic metre, a trochee is a heavy syllable followed by a light one (al ...

s". This comment about the absence of anapest and trochee has been interpreted to mean that the music was not based on the usual “walking” meters, since the chorus sings the stasimon while remaining in the orchestra. After making its entrance singing the parodos, it does not usually leave the orchestra until the end of the play. The '' Suda'', an 11th-century Byzantine encyclopedia, attributes the establishment of the choral singing of a stasimon to the celebrated

kitharode A kitharode ( Latinized citharode) : ( translit. Greek) * citharode (Anglicised translit. Latin) * kitharode (Anglicised translit. Greek) : * citharede (rare) * citharoede (rare) : * citharist (English translation Latin) * kitharist (English t ...

Arion of Hermione. Thomas J. Mathiesen, ''Apollo's Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages'', Publications of the Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature 2 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999): 74.

References

{{reflist Ancient Greek songs Doric Greek Ancient Greek theatre fr:Tragédie grecque#Structure et langue