Performance and the Drinking Vessel: Looking for an Imagery of Dithyramb in the time of the ‘New Music’ (original) (raw)
Related papers
Bravi, Lomiento, Meriani & Pace (eds), Tra lyra e aulos: Tradizioni musicali e generi poetici, pp. 327-354.
This paper puts forward a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the iconography of chelys-lyres and barbitoi associated with satyrs and Dionysos in late 5th and early 4th century Attic vase-painting, in an attempt to confront independent visual evidence with the textually-driven narratives on musical hierarchies and polemics in Classical Athens. The author identifies a coherent lineage of vase-painters which introduce the lyre in the semantics of Dionysiac iconography in the late 5th and early 4th century BC, escaping the musical polarizations associated with the critics of New Music – thus illuminating a largely invisible segment within the Athenian society in a time of political and socio-cultural turmoil.
Circular choruses and the dithyramb in the Hellenistic period – a problem of definition
in B. Kowalzig and P. Wilson (eds.), Dithyramb in Context, Oxford 2013, 153–170.
The contest we call 'dithyrambic' was probably the most important component of the Athenian City Dionysia: ten choroi of men and ten of boys, each fifty strong, involving thus yearly about 1,000 choreuts, competed for victory, dancing and singing to the accompaniment of the aulos. The victorious choregos would immortalize his-and his own tribe's-success by means of an expensive monument, which would permanently enter the physical and symbolic landscape of the polis. The finances involved confirm the importance of this performance: the amount spent on it seems to have been much greater than for tragedy. 1 However, a glance at the data on musical performances in the classical and Hellenistic period reveals a surprising gap between the cultic/generic label we tend to use ('dithyramb') and the terms chosen by the polis to record these performances. 2 To stay with the Athenian example, the choregic monuments recorded victories at the Dionysia with the name of the tribe, followed by the age-category ('boys' or 'men'); similarly, the long list known as Fasti (IG II 2 2318) registered, after the archon's name, the tribe victorious in the competition of paides and its choregos, the tribe victorious in the competition of andres and its choregos, and the names of the victorious choregoi of komoidoi and of tragoidoi, with the respective didaskaloi. While for comedy and tragedy the term used for the performers corresponds to the 'generic' definition, for the song-and-dance competitions the terminology foregrounds the social status and the age of the performers. 3 Widening the inquiry to the rest of the Greek world confirms * My thanks to Giovan Battista D'Alessio, for long discussions at the time of the conference, and to Ingo Gildenhard for help with the revision of the paper.
Oversized Athenian Drinking Vessels in Context: Their Role in Etruscan Ritual Performances
American Journal of Archaeology, 2020
This article discusses a distinctive class of Athenian figure-decorated vases consisting of a few black-figure and red-figure cups and some phialai that are dated to the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. All are large, and some are huge, with diameters varying between about 35 and 56 cm. After tracking the shift in the distribution of these vessels from the late sixth century on, from Greek contexts to a concentration in southern Etruria, the article examines several case studies based on reconstructed material assemblages from Etruscan sanctuaries and graves in order to better understand the part played by the purchasers in the local reception and use of these monumental Athenian vases. I attempt to go beyond earlier explanations that see these objects as exchange gifts reflecting the prestige of the aristocratic owners and to demonstrate how this distinctive class of pottery responded to a variety of indigenous needs, practices, and interpretations. 1 introduction Athenian pottery imports in the Italian peninsula, especially southern Etruria, have been the subject of scholarship since the early 19th century, when excavations undertaken in the necropoleis of Vulci yielded thousands of these vessels. 2 While initially focused on the analysis of shapes, iconographical subjects, and painters' styles, scholars gradually began to concentrate on the actions of traders and the effects of this foreign market on Athenian potters, though, until recently, from a Hellenocentric point of view. 3 Since the late 1990s, studies have shown a new interest in purchasers, networks, and markets for figure-decorated pottery with keen attention to the choices of Italic consumers. 4 These studies have discussed how indigenous populations used Greek vases, 5 often relating material culture to the construction of 1 Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Oxford graduate seminars on Greek Pots Abroad in 2008 and at the Pottery Research Group meeting in 2012 (Institute of Classical Studies, University College London). I greatly benefited from discussions with A. Johnston, E. Langridge-Noti, M. Stansbury-O'Donnell, and T. Carpenter and, on Etruscan matters, with B. van der Meer and C. Riva. Many thanks are also due to M. Mendonça and S. Sarti. Also extremely helpful were the reviews of S. Bundrick and two anonymous reviewers for the AJA, and the comments of AJA Editor-in-Chief Jane B. Carter. Remaining errors are mine. I am very grateful to C. Johnston and B. Simpson, AJA editorial staff, for help in practical and editing matters. For assistance in obtaining photographs and copyright permits, I acknowledge R.
ASCS 2012 (33) Proceedings, 2012
This paper will present the case for interpreting the representation of satyrs and maenads in the black-figure period as a reflection of some form of performance. The painters’ penchant for showing satyrs and maenads singing, dancing, and playing musical instruments is one of the clear indicators of this. This emerges from an analysis of the representations of gods, particularly Dionysos, in order to investigate the potential for interpreting the scenes as related to festival practice. Thus far groups of vases which show satyrs and maenads engaged in various activities have indeed supported the hypothesis that more vases than previously thought can be seen as evoking festival or ritual practice. The activity that will be the focus of this paper is that of satyrs lifting maenads and carrying them on their shoulders. Although the connotation of abduction in these scenes seems obvious, the indications of dance and the inclusion of musical instruments in the depictions support an interpretation of the scenes as showing a performance of abduction. More importantly, these representations of performing satyrs can also be seen as evoking the festivals of the god for whom they dance and sing.
10th Moisa Meeting, ‘The Revolution of the New Music’, Jesus College, Oxford, 28th-30th July 2017
Euripides’ interest in religious phenomena and particularly in Dionysism provides the major link between the poet and the New Musicians. In fact, far from embodying the final collapse of the religious impulse, New Music constitutes a revival of the Dionysian element at a time when it had come close to extinction. This religious mood is expressed through lush imagery, florid diction, verbal repetition, avant-garde musical effects and a constant self-referentiality, i.e. the metadiscursive description of song, music and dance that emphasizes the ode’s own performative dimension. The imagery of Dionysiac performance is characteristic of Euripides’ later choral odes and returns particularly in Helen’ second stasimon, generally considered the most irrelevant ode in Greek Tragedy and viewed as being influenced by the New Music’s alleged irrelevance and empty aestheticism. Helen’s second stasimon, which may be considered one of the greatest examples of ‘choral self-referentiality’, foregrounds its own connections with the mimetic program of the New Music and its emphasis on the emancipation of feelings. Euripides refers repeatedly to musical instruments (vv. 1308, 1346-51, 1362), attributes of the cults (1359-62), movements (1364-5), ecstatic cries (1344) and ceremonies (1365). Far from performing a purely aesthetic function, the systematic evocation of cult, music and dance instead ‘resolves’ the stasimon: indeed, it is the sound of cymbals and tympana – connected to the cults of both Cybele and Dionysus – that makes the goddess smile and that alleviates her grief. Cybele will not get her daughter back, but after what may be considered an exhortation to worship Dionysus, she smiles. The only consolation, the poet seems to suggest, has nothing to do with reason, but may be found in the irruptive experience of ecstatic cults, in music and in the transformative power of dance that provide emotional release. My aim is to show that Euripides’ deep interest in contemporary musical innovations is connected to his interest in the irrational that made him the most tragic of the poets. Focusing on the musical aspect of the stasimon, I will examine how Euripides conveys a sense of the irrational through a new type of song that liberates music’s power to excite and disorient through its colours, ornament and dizzying wildness. Just as the New Musicians present themselves as the preservers of cultic tradition, Euripides, far from suppressing Dionysus as Nietzsche claimed, deserves to rank as the most Dionysiac and in some ways as the most religious of the three tragedians.