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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
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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 • 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 - Symposium • 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
Worksong - Sportsong • Worksongs: carrying 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 athletic 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 • Musicians for routine service • Eterae • Slaves, often of foreign origins
Choral training was institutionalized • In Crete boys were drafted into herds and subjected to a disciplined regimen directed towards making them hardly men: they learned dances in armor 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 (auletesteauleteoginetaikaimageirosmageiroukaikeryxkerykos), 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 imagesthrough 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 mousikewas 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