170 likes | 256 Views
Greek Musicians. Music lesson. Attic red-figure, 480-470 BC. A song for every occasion. Prosodion : processional song Peana : (choral and solo song), addressed most often to Apollo, (private, festivals, war, prayer for deliveralce to danger
E N D
A song for every occasion • Prosodion: processional song • Peana: (choral and solo song), addressed most often to Apollo, (private, festivals, war, prayer for deliveralce to danger • Dythiramb: choral song, in the City Dionisia each chorus was fiffty strong, dancing in circular formation, every year a thousand citizens preformed dithiramb
Hymeneum: wedding procession, young male dancers, drinking in the streets, a riot of incense, matron ululate • After the newly-weds had gone in for the night, the singing continued ouside the closed door!
Funerals: mourners wailing and tearing their hair and garments, laments were sung by trained threnodist • Symposium: hymn to the gods, political comments, reflections on the joys of wine or the pains of love, moral advices, humorous abuse
Worksongs: carring the basket of grapes, building works, on board ship the music helped to keep the rowers in time, marching into battle • Childsongs: singing connected to the ball games • Songs for the atletic games and for the victories
Education in athens • In Athens: education with teacher of letter, physical trainer and ”lyre-man” • ”he doesn’t know to play the lyre” was equivalent to say ”he hasn’t had a good education. • Socrates was taking lessons in the lyre at an advanced age
Professionals • Homeric singer, rhapsodus • citharodes and auletes (festivals) • Poet-composers (Pindar, Simonides), created songs for a fee for patrons • Musitian for routine service • Eterae • Slaves, often of foreing origins
Choral training was institutionalized • In Crete boys were drafted into herds and subjected to a disciplined regimen directed towards making them harly men: they learned dences in armour and the singing of pean • In Sparta the girls were under the guidance of a chourus-master and taught to revere her and obey her
Genealogies • The relation teacher-pupil was similar to a blood relationship (father-son). • The corporation of the musicians was a kind of family. • The Spartan musicians were descendants of some families. • There was a mythical genealogy of musicians
Genealogies • the origin of singing to the aulos was ascribed, through Hyagnis and Marsyas, to Olympus and then Hierax; • singing to accompaniment of the kithara was ascribed to Thaletas, Terpander and Archilochus
HERODOTUS (Hdt.) • VI.60: Moreover the Lacedaemonians are like the Egyptians, in that their heralds and flute-players (auletai) and cooks inherit the craft from their fathers, a flute-player's son (auletes) being a flute-player, and a cook's son a cook, and a herald's son a herald (auletes te auleteo ginetai kai mageiros mageirou kai keryx kerykos), no others usurp their places, making themselves heralds by loudness of voice; they play their craft by right of birth.
Gift of the memory • This theme is based on the concept of memory as a gift, which is inherited and passed down along the branches of genealogies - starting from a Muse, the mother, and Apollo, the divine father - to the son or pupil, singer and link in the chain of knowledge; memory is a gift transmitted by the gods to men
Conservative Music • The music was conservative. • We can talk about a mythology of the musical reminiscence. • The role of music was conserving, transmitting and repeating sounds and myths.
the musician was able to combine sound and images through the use of his voice, gestures, dance, and instruments; when the musician organized a chorus, he also ruled all aspects of the accompaniment on the aulos or kithara, in addition to coordinating words, music and movements • In this context mousike was verbally described as the necessary techne to combine text, music and movement, though the process of selection among linguistic-thematic and rhythmic-musical options
Plato • Liked lyres with few strings • Mathematics and order of cosmos • In the Laws he accept aulos as a traditional instrument • In the Republic he condemn the polyharmonic bombyx and the virtuosos
Aristotle • Exclude the aulòs from the educational training of young men • Isn’t possible to talk and sing • Phrigian mode and aulos makes people enthusiastic (entranced), is cathartic • Dorian mode and lyre: ethical, moral character