Musical Structure in Greek Tragedy: Introduction

IF 0.2 3区 历史学 0 CLASSICS
ARETHUSA Pub Date : 2024-04-25 DOI:10.1353/are.2024.a925535
Timothy J. Moore
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Musical Structure in Greek Tragedy: Introduction1
  • Timothy J. Moore

The last four decades have brought remarkable progress in our understanding of ancient Greek music, including that of Athenian tragedy. Even before this revolution in the study of Greek music, however, the two basic ways in which our surviving texts reveal tragedy’s musical structure were widely acknowledged: the correlation between type of meter and musical performance, and the role of quantitative meter in determining musical rhythm.

The first key to tragedy’s musical structure is the clear evidence that, in Greek drama, iambic trimeters were as a rule spoken without accompaniment and lyric meters sung to the accompaniment of the aulos. The foundation of every tragedy’s structure, therefore, is an alternation between spoken dialogues in iambic trimeter and sung choruses in lyric meters. Playwrights sometimes diverged from this standard musical structure in three ways. First, they wrote monodies, in which an actor sang. Second, they included amoebaean passages, where two actors, or an actor and the chorus, both sang in alternation, or one sang and the other spoke iambic trimeters. Third, they used meters that were neither iambic trimeters nor lyric: primarily non-lyric anapests, trochaic tetrameters, and dactylic hexameters. The performance mode of these “in between” meters is not certain. It appears likely that playwrights and performers could choose whether passages in these meters would be accompanied by the aulos or not, and also to what degree performers’ mode of utterance would approach what we would call speech, song, or chant. At the very least, the rhythms [End Page 3] of these meters brought a heightening of musicality greater than iambic trimeters but probably not matching that of lyrics.

The second way surviving texts reveal musical structure lies in the quantitative nature of Greek meter. Recent scholarship has made clear that it would be naïve to assume an exact correspondence between musical rhythm and meter, especially after the musical innovations of the fifth century. Nevertheless, meter, with its opposition of long and short syllables, must have been the foundation of sung rhythm. This relationship means two important things for structure. First, it means that any repetitions and contrasts in meter would also mean repetitions and contrasts in rhythm. Such repetitions and contrasts would therefore be heard clearly in performance and could play an important role in providing structure. More specifically, the close correspondence between meter and rhythm means that the metrical responsion that pervades Greek tragedy’s lyrics—the most conspicuous structural feature in most lyric passages—would represent clearly audible rhythmic repetition. As several of the authors in this issue note, there is a very high degree of probability that that responsion also called for repeated melodies and responding choreography.

The essays in this special issue of Arethusa combine an awareness of these two principles with the latest results of research on ancient music to provide new perspectives on how the musical structure of tragedy worked.

Armand D’Angour, in “The Music of Tragedy: Implications of the Reconstructed Orestes Papyrus,” examines what the most important piece of tragic music that has survived from antiquity, a third-century bce papyrus preserving part of a chorus from Euripides’ Orestes, can tell us about Greek tragic music. The notation on the papyrus, D’Angour concludes, reveals the importance of mimetic word painting, pitch accents, parallel musical phrasing, and spoken interjections in tragic song. Tragic melodies would sound less unfamiliar to modern listeners than has often been thought, and they would be performed in units different from those assumed by modern metricians. Movement by choruses is likely to have been solemn and simple, even when they sang complex meters.

In “Anapests and the Tragic Plot,” Timothy Moore examines how one type of meter, anapestic, contributes to structure across extant tragedy. Moore observes that fifteen of the surviving Greek tragedies feature an unusual use of anapests in their early scenes and then repeated use of anapests at significant moments later in the play. In each, Moore argues, this combination of musical surprise and repetition is used to draw attention to the driving force of the play’s plot. [End Page 4]

The next three essays approach responsion from three...

希腊悲剧中的音乐结构:导言
以下是内容的简要摘录,以代替摘要: 希腊悲剧中的音乐结构:导言1 Timothy J. Moore 过去四十年来,我们对古希腊音乐(包括雅典悲剧音乐)的理解取得了显著进展。然而,即使在这场希腊音乐研究的革命之前,我们现存的文本揭示悲剧音乐结构的两种基本方式已得到广泛认可:节拍类型与音乐表现之间的相关性,以及定量节拍在决定音乐节奏方面的作用。悲剧音乐结构的第一个关键是有明确的证据表明,在希腊戏剧中,三拍子通常是无伴奏的口语,而抒情节拍则是在乌洛斯的伴奏下歌唱的。因此,每部悲剧结构的基础都是以抑扬格三拍子进行的口语对话和以抒情格进行的歌唱合唱之间的交替。剧作家有时会以三种方式偏离这种标准的音乐结构。首先,他们创作独唱剧,由演员演唱。其次,他们在作品中加入 "阿米巴 "段落,即两个演员或一个演员和合唱队交替演唱,或一个人演唱,另一个人说三拍子。第三,他们使用既非三连音节拍也非抒情节拍的节拍:主要是非韵律无伴奏节拍、三拍四音节节拍和双韵律六音节节拍。这些 "介于 "之间的节拍的表演模式尚不确定。剧作家和表演者似乎可以选择这些节拍中的段落是否伴有阿乌洛斯,也可以选择表演者的说话方式在多大程度上接近我们所说的演讲、歌曲或吟诵。至少,这些节拍的节奏 [第 3 页完] 带来了比三度音程更强的音乐性,但可能无法与歌词相提并论。现存文本揭示音乐结构的第二种方式在于希腊语节拍的定量性。最新的学术研究表明,认为音乐节奏与节拍完全对应是幼稚的,尤其是在五世纪音乐革新之后。然而,长音节和短音节对立的节拍肯定是歌唱节奏的基础。这种关系对结构有两个重要意义。首先,它意味着任何节拍的重复和对比也意味着节奏的重复和对比。因此,这种重复和对比在演奏中会被清晰地听到,并在提供结构方面发挥重要作用。更具体地说,节拍与节奏之间的密切对应意味着希腊悲剧歌词中普遍存在的节拍应答--大多数抒情段落中最明显的结构特征--将代表清晰可闻的节奏重复。正如本期的几位作者所指出的,这种呼应很有可能也需要重复的旋律和呼应的编排。本期《Arethusa》特刊中的文章将对这两个原则的认识与古代音乐研究的最新成果相结合,为悲剧的音乐结构如何运作提供了新的视角。Armand D'Angour 在 "悲剧音乐:重建的《奥瑞斯忒斯》纸莎草纸的启示 "一文中,探讨了古代流传下来的最重要的悲剧音乐作品--公元前三世纪保存有欧里庇得斯作品《奥瑞斯忒斯》中合唱部分的纸莎草纸--对希腊悲剧音乐的启示。德安古尔总结说,纸莎草纸上的记谱法揭示了悲剧歌曲中模仿性词画、音高重音、平行乐句和口语插话的重要性。对于现代听众来说,悲剧旋律听起来并不像人们通常认为的那么陌生,而且它们的演奏单位也与现代公制学家假设的单位不同。合唱团的动作很可能是庄重而简单的,即使他们唱的是复杂的节拍。蒂莫西-摩尔(Timothy Moore)在《无节拍与悲剧情节》一书中研究了一种节拍--无节拍--如何对现存悲剧的结构起作用。摩尔发现,在现存的希腊悲剧中,有 15 部在开头的场景中不同寻常地使用了无伴奏节拍,然后在剧中的重要时刻重复使用无伴奏节拍。摩尔认为,在每一出悲剧中,这种音乐惊喜和重复的结合都是为了引起人们对戏剧情节推动力的注意。[第 4 页完] 接下来的三篇文章将从三个方面来论述 "回应"。
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来源期刊
ARETHUSA
ARETHUSA CLASSICS-
CiteScore
0.30
自引率
0.00%
发文量
4
期刊介绍: Arethusa is known for publishing original literary and cultural studies of the ancient world and of the field of classics that combine contemporary theoretical perspectives with more traditional approaches to literary and material evidence. Interdisciplinary in nature, this distinguished journal often features special thematic issues.
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