Description
This is a description of a victory celebration, inspired by the winged goddess of victory – Nike – but with a gentle little dance of celebration in the interlude for which the cello is replaced by a descant recorder, representing, perhaps “the lovely chorus of the Karthaians the sons of Kranaus and in the pastimes of the Muses crowning Bacchylides of Ceos with many garlands.” [Bacchylides, Epigrams 2 ].
The guitar part uses artificial harmonics (stopped strings with right hand over the midpoint of the string) and natural (open string) harmonics in the recorder interlude.
The music is performed by Chris Benson and David Solomons – on an audio cassette machine in 1975.
The images (all from Wikimedia) are:
Freize of the Goddess Nike (=Victory) at Ephesus (public domain)
Statue of Athena holding Nike – (Bryan Kemp Creative Commons)
Coin from the time of Alexander the Great depicting Athena and Nike (WorldImaging Creative Commons)
Andrea Mantegna: Dance of the Muses (public domain) – for the recorder section
Hans Rottenhammer: Minerva and the Muses (public domain) – for the recorder section