Lamprus of Erythrae or Lamprus of Athens () was an ancient Greek musician with excellent skill at the playing of the lyre.H. W. Garrod
Life Lamprus was born in Athens,msu.edu website alive in the early part of the fifth century B.C.E., and taught music to Sophocles according to some.page.123 of Mary Ellen Snodgrass & James Lamar Roberts books.google.co.uk website Retrieved 2011-12-03. .Copyright © 1997–2010. European Graduate School EGS egs.edu website Retrieved 2011-12-03. He was a teacher of the lyreBigelow, Caroline and dance.William Smith (ed) (1870) Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
A teacher named Lamprus, sometime before 343 B.C.E, while in Mantineia,Thomas J. Mathiesen within Retrieved 2011-09-13.Lewis Rowell jstor.org website is held to have taught Aristoxenus.Andrew Barker ebooks.cambridge.org Retrieved 2011-12-03. However, the fifth-century Lamprus would not have survived long enough to be the teacher of Aristoxenus, so that "Either this is a Lamprus of whom we know nothing else, or the reference has been added to the biographical tradition in order to emphasize Aristoxenus' connection with traditional ancient Greek music as opposed to the "New Music" of the late fifth and fourth centuries.Christopher C. Marchetti, Aristoxenus Elements of Rhythm, Diss. Rutgers 1999, p. 3, citing Laloy 1904, p. 11 for the chronological problem.
Lamprus was noted for his sober lifestyle, choosing to drink water instead of wine; Phrynichus said of him, "that the gulls lamented, when Lamprus died among them, being a man who was a water-drinker, a subtle hypersophist, a dry skeleton of the Muses, a nightmare to nightingales, a hymn to hell."Translated by C.D.Yonge (1854) (attalus.org website) from excerpts of Athenaeus : The Deipnosophists - BOOK 2 : [21.]. Retrieved 2011-09-13.
Music The music of Lamprus is considered restrained, indicating a sober temperament, rather than wild and realistic.Blake Tyrrell (Michigan State University) scholar.lib.vt.edu LIFE OF SOPHOCLES Retrieved 2011-09-14.
Plato's Socrates recognizes Lamprus as a great music teacher, although placing him below his own teacher, Connus son of Metrobius (Menexenus 236a ). Lamprus was also praised by Cornelius Nepos.J.Dymock & D.Dymock (1833) Bibliotheca classica (books.google.co.uk website) Pseudo-Plutarch's De Musica 1142b "quotes Aristoxenus as including Lamprus among lyric composers who composed good songs." Lamprus, the "most distinguished musician of his day,"Stanley Hochman books.google.co.uk McGraw-Hill publishing was a famous composer in Sophocles' daynotablebiographies.com and was considered by some as perhaps the greatest musician of his time.libertyfund.org website Retrieved 2011-09-13.
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