[2] Melanippides did not, however, escape the censures which the old comic poets so often heap upon their lyric contemporaries for their corruption of the severe beauties of the ancient music.
Pherecrates places him at the head of such offenders and charges him with relaxing and softening the ancient music by increasing the chords of the lyre to twelve (or perhaps ten) and thus paving the way for the further licences introduced by Cinesias, Phrynis, and Timotheus of Miletus.
[3] According to Aristotle, he altogether abandoned the antistrophic arrangement, and introduced long preludes (anabolai) in which the union, which was considered essential in ancient times, between music and the words of poetry, seems to have been severed.
[4] Plutarch (or the author of the essay on music which bears his name) said that in his flute-music he subverted the old arrangement by which the flute-player was hired and trained by the poet, and was entirely subordinate to him.
[5] But there is probably some mistake in this, as the fragment of Pherecrates, which the author quotes in confirmation of his statement, contains not a word about flute-music, but attacks only the alterations in the lyre.