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The Music of Tragedy offers a new approach to the study of classical Greek theater by examining the use of musical language, imagery, and performance in the late work of Euripides. Naomi Weiss demonstrates that Euripides’ allusions to music-making are not just metatheatrical flourishes or gestures towards musical and religious practices external to the drama but closely interwoven with the dramatic plot. Situating Euripides’ experimentation with the dramaturgical effects of mousike within a broader cultural context, she shows how much of his novelty lies in his reinvention of traditional lyric styles and motifs for the tragic stage. If we wish to understand better the trajectories of this most important ancient art form, The Music of Tragedy argues, we must pay closer attention to the role played by both music and text.
Price: $34.95
Pages: 304
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date:
21 May 2024
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520401440
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
"Weiss offers us a new way of seeing how choruses are central characters in Euripides’ late plays, even when they seem at first glance far removed from what is going on around them. Her work is an excellent example of the current revolution in the study of ancient music, which is refuting definitively the facile assumption that tragedy's music in unknowable and therefore uninteresting."
Naomi A. Weiss is Assistant Professor of Classics at Harvard University. She has published widely on ancient Greek poetry and performance culture, especially tragedy.
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Note on Editions and Translations
Introduction: In Search of Tragedy’s Music
1. Words, Music, and Dance in Archaic Lyric and Classical Tragedy
Before Tragedy: Imaginative Suggestion in Archaic Choral Lyric
Metamusical Play in Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Early Euripides
2. Chorus, Character, and Plot in Electra
Electra and the Chorus
Performed Ecphrasis
Choral Anticipation and Enactment
3. Musical Absence in Trojan Women
The Paradox of Absent Choreia
New Songs and Past Performances
Performing the Fall of Troy
4. Protean Singers and the Shaping of Narrative in Helen
Birdsong and Lament
New Music
Travel and Epiphany
5. From Choreia to Monody in Iphigenia in Aulis
Spectatorship, Enactment, and Desire
Past and Present Mousike
Choreia and Monody
Conclusion: Euripides’ Musical Innovations
Works Cited
General Index
Index Locorum
Abbreviations
Note on Editions and Translations
Introduction: In Search of Tragedy’s Music
1. Words, Music, and Dance in Archaic Lyric and Classical Tragedy
Before Tragedy: Imaginative Suggestion in Archaic Choral Lyric
Metamusical Play in Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Early Euripides
2. Chorus, Character, and Plot in Electra
Electra and the Chorus
Performed Ecphrasis
Choral Anticipation and Enactment
3. Musical Absence in Trojan Women
The Paradox of Absent Choreia
New Songs and Past Performances
Performing the Fall of Troy
4. Protean Singers and the Shaping of Narrative in Helen
Birdsong and Lament
New Music
Travel and Epiphany
5. From Choreia to Monody in Iphigenia in Aulis
Spectatorship, Enactment, and Desire
Past and Present Mousike
Choreia and Monody
Conclusion: Euripides’ Musical Innovations
Works Cited
General Index
Index Locorum