Academic literature on the topic 'Chorus (Greek drama)'

Sharing data can be a journey with various characters, challenges along the way, and uncertain outcomes. These “epic journeys in sharing” teach information professionals about our patrons, our institutions, our community, and ourselves. In this paper, we tell a particularly dramatic data-sharing story, in effect a case study, in the form of a Greek Drama. It is the quest of – a young idealistic researcher collecting fascinating sensitive data and seeking to share it, encountering an institution doing its due diligence, helpful library folks, and an expert repository. Our story has moments of joy, such as when our researcher is solely motivated to share because she wants others to be able to reuse her unique data; dramatic plot twists involving IRBs; and a poignant ending. It explores major tropes and themes about how researchers’ motivations, data types, and data sensitivity can impact sharing; the importance of having clarity concerning institutional policies and procedures; and the role of professional communities and relationships. Just like the chorus in greek drama provides commentary on the action, a a chorus of data elders in our drama points out larger lessons that the case study has for research data management and data sharing. Where actors in the greek chorus were wearing masks, our chorus carries different items, symbolizing their message, on every entry. [i] The narrative structure of this paper was inspired by the IASSIST 2018 conference theme of “Once Upon a Data Point: Sustaining Our Data Storytellers.”

In this paper we shall try to clarify the role of the chorus in the origin and development of the ancient tragedy. We can rightly say that it represents the pinnacle of intellectual and artistic expression of the Greek civilization. We will point out historical circumstances and facts related to the existence of the chorus; the place the chorus has in Greek society and on the stage as well as its characteristics will also be discussed.In the second part of this paper, possibilities of reviving the ancient drama, especially tragedy on the modern scene, shall be discussed. Should one aspire towards a more faithful imitation or a creative interpretation? What are the difficulties a director is facing when he has to decide what to do with the chorus? Is there only one answer or are there more?

Abstract The story of Danae and her son Perseus on Seriphos, where they are initially rescued by Dictys only to be his molested by his brother Polydectes, appeared in Greek lyric, tragedy, and comedy. Aeschylus’ satyric handling of the story has been read as a light-hearted, romantic romp with Silenos and the chorus acting as benign foster-parents to the infant hero. But Aeschylus gives Silenos and the chorus of satyrs a more menacing identity than they generally had in other plays of this genre. Silenos can be seen as the comical counterpart of Polydectes, and appears to have the full support of his sons, something he clearly does not enjoy in other satyric dramas. The satyrs of the chorus stand in contrast to the often more sympathetic, if clownish, creatures they can be elsewhere. Diktyoulkoi contains elements typical of satyr drama, but in paradoxical ways not without moments of pathos.

This paper is an exploration of the performance of Greek drama from the perspective of the performers, more specifically, of the chorus-in-training. The notion that khoreia constitutes an essential part of paideia and ethical instruction is an ancient one. And the notion persists, though in different forms, among scholars of the social and political context of these dramatic performances that to have participated in a chorus was in particular ways to have received training in essential perspectives and experiences of citizens: ‘the events and characters portrayed in tragedy are meant to be contemplated as lessons by young citizens.’ And yet what the members of a chorus were expected to learn, did learn, and, moreover, how they learned, have remained largely unexplored topics.I will suggest ways that we might begin to piece together a baseline of experiences and impressions that come through learning to sing, dance and compete in dramatic festivals. Most of the experiences that I will describe are partly functions of universal properties of the human mind; of course, culture and thoughts and other aspects of shared and individual experience are highly variable. Indeed, the contents of thought are unrestricted. But there are regular, even fixed, ways in which the mind and brain appear to work. I propose to describe an approach to the ways in which the words and movements and environment of dramatic competition are universally present to and apprehended by the senses and minds and bodies of a chorus-in-training. I am not suggesting that there are not other aspects of experience that are important to the performance and appreciation of drama. Rather, I hope to establish at the very least those aspects of training and performance that are necessary and perhaps even sufficient to bring a drama (and I take the chorus to be the most important part of drama) to the arena of competition. I will consider some of the lasting effects of dramatic training and performance on the life of the performer, i.e., how every performer may be changed by his experience.

The parodos is the first appearance of the Chorus in a classical Greek drama, an occurrence common to tragedy, comedy – and that curious hybrid form, of which very few examples are extant, the satyr play. One of the two complete surviving, texts is the Ichneutai or Searching Satyrs of Sophocles: and in the following exercise in literary detection. Paola Polesso bases her investigation of the play not only on linguistic evidence but on clues which emerge from seeing the play in performance, to suggest the chronological context with in which the play may now be more precisely placed. Dr. Polesso, who presently teaches drama in the University of Bologna, has acted as assistant director to Luca Ronconi, and has been a contributor to numerous Italian theatre journals.

Abstract After briefly outlining the vocabulary of closure and endings in Greek tragedy, this article analyses three possible features of closure: (1) lament (kommos), (2) deus ex machina combined with an aetiological myth (almost exclusively in Euripides), and (3) a gnomic coda spoken by the chorus. All three types of ending remain external to the plot and do not resolve the dramatic conflict. The paper then looks at two case studies from dramas centered on the same myth, i.e. the campaign of the Seven against Thebes in Aeschylus’ play of the same name and in Euripides’ Phoenissae. The endings of these tragedies have provoked much discussion regarding their textual transmission and reconstruction. I discuss how and when the action seems to be ‘fulfilled’, and contrast the strong closure of Aeschylus’ play with the “hypertextual mythical continuity” (Lamari) of Euripides’ drama.

As well as being a widely published poet, Tony Harrison is well known as a dramatist for his reworkings of classical materials, from ancient Greek to medieval. When he was invited to contribute a play for the eighth International Meeting on Ancient Greek Drama, on the theme of ‘Crossing Millennia’, to be held at the European Cultural Centre of Delphi in August 1995, he chose to present a version of The Labourers of Herakles set on a building site – a building site the Greek sponsors specially ‘constructed’ for the event. In describing the single performance of the play, Carol Chillington Rutter, who teaches in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, vividly evokes the theatrical forcefulness of the occasion: but she questions what she considers the ambivalence of Harrison's theatre work in its presentation and treatment of women – of which the decision to visualize the chorus of women in Labourers as cement mixers was most strikingly emblematic.

Hellas; A Lyrical Drama (1822) reveals profound tensions in Shelley's thinking about the role that poets play in writing the future. In the Preface, Shelley invokes his ‘poet's privilege’ to imagine the outcome of the ‘unfinished scene’ – the ongoing Greek War of Independence – but the final chorus, which begins by triumphantly announcing the return of a ‘great age’, also voices an anxiety that it may be impossible to imagine a future that is unbound by the failures of the past. This essay examines the ways in which Shelley imagines the outcome of the Greek War in Hellas, especially in dialogue with the claims he makes for poetry and poets in A Defence of Poetry (comp. 1821). I argue that what emerges in Hellas is a fraught form of utopian thought that is defined by hazardous struggle, but which may ultimately direct humanity towards a better future.

Scholars agree that the United States is experiencing a new black civil and human rights movement called #BlackLivesMatter and that the Internet is pivotal to that movement. Protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and in Baltimore, Maryland, dominated national attention for months through 2014 and 2015. Protesters have successfully gained the attention of elite power brokers, a necessary step in the social movement process. #BlackLivesMatter has many insights to provide about mobilization, if researchers take black American discursive power and intellectual production more seriously as subjects of analysis. This article argues that a dramaturgy framework reveals important meaning making that occurs on the periphery of a social movement. In this periphery, my analysis shows that black social media publics are harbingers of racial progress. Introducing the concept of a Greek Chorus to the dramaturgy framework better clarifies the role that Twitter plays in the movement as a public space where outside observers negotiate their own meaning making surrounding the movement’s claims and strategies. Conceptualizing movement mechanics in this way provides a clearer understanding of the importance of digital media in the contemporary black civil rights movement without relying on technological determinism, reducing social media to a structural component of the movement, or undermining the importance of physicality to protest.

RESUMENEn este artículo se revisa la información acerca de la supuesta belleza del género enharmónico tal y como habla de él Aristóxeno en su tratado musical, el más antiguo conservado, sin perder de vista el hecho de que con toda probabilidad ya había desaparecido cuando escribió sus Elementa harmonica en el siglo iv a. C. En cualquier caso, este género no se conserva en la fase helenística ni en el período romano, fue tempranamente sustituido por los otros dos géneros, el cromático y el diatónico. Mi metodología de investigación buscará mostrar que parte del problema de su extinción en la música práctica debe de haber yacido en los problemas que implica la afinación del tetracordo enharmónico para la voz humana, especialmente en un contexto en que la mayoría de los cantantes de los coros del drama antiguo era enteramente amateur. En conclusión, los tratados deben de estar analizando una práctica que ya no existe, aunque los autores la añoran, y cuya dificultad vocal y técnica debió de conducir a la eliminación del coro en fases tardías de la tragedia y la comedia, especialmente tras la irrupción en escena de la vanguardia de compositores de la Nueva Música. Palabras clave: enharmónico, técnica vocal, música, dramaTopónimos: antigua AtenasPeríodo: época clásica ABSTRACTIn this paper, I revise the information about the alleged beauty of the enharmonic genre as it is dealt with in Aristoxenus’ book. Being the oldest extant Greek treatise on music theory and without losing sight of the fact that most probably had already disappeared when he wrote his Elementa Harmonica in the fourth century BC, is the oldest of all extant pieces on which we shall base our research. In any case, this genre is not found either in any example in the Hellenistic phase or in the Roman period, having been early replaced by the other two genres (the chromatic and the diatonic). My researching methodology will show what part of the problems for its extinction in music practice have relied on tune problems, especially those of the enharmonic tetrachord for human voice in a context in which most of the choral singers of ancient drama were entirely amateur. As a result, treatises would be showing a non-existing-but-longed-for practice, whose technical and vocal difficulties must have led to the elimination of the chorus in later phases of tragedy and comedy, primarily after the appearance of the avant-garde New Music composing wave on stage. Keywords: enharmonic, vocal technique, music, dramaToponym: ancient AthensPeriod: classic REFERENCIASBarker, A. (1984): Greek Musical Writings: I. The Musician and his Art, Cambridge, University Press.—(1989): Greek Musical Writings: II. Harmonic and Acoustic Theory, Cambridge, University Press.—(2007): The Science of Harmonics in Classical Greece, Cambridge, University Press.Bélis, A. (1986): Aristoxène de Tarente et Aristote. Le Traité d’Harmonique, Paris, Klincksiek.Calame, C. (2017): La tragédie chorale. Poésie grecque et rituel musical, Paris, Les Belles Lettres.Calero, L. (2016): La voz y el canto en la Antigua Grecia. Tesis doctoral. Madrid, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.—(2017): “De la música oriental a las prácticas musicales de la Grecia arcaica”, en J. J. Martínez García, L. García Carreras, D. López Muñoz, C. I. Caravaca Guerrero, C.M. Sánchez Mondéjar, C. Molina Valero, M. Andrés Nicolás y P.D. Conesa Navarro (coords.) 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(2010): Ancient Greek Music. A New Technical History, Cambridge, University Press.—(2016): “‘Leading Notes’ in Ancient Near Eastern and Greek Music and Their Relation to Instrument Design”, en Ricardo Eichmann, Lars-Christian Koch Jianjun Fang (Eds.) Studien zur Musikarchäologie X; Vorträge des 9. Symposiums der Internationalen Studiengruppe Musikarchäologie im Ethnologischen Museum der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Rahden/Westf., Leidorf, pp. 133-150.Hulen, L. (2006): “A musical scale in simple ratios of the harmonic series converted to cents of twelve-tone equal temperament for digital synthesis”, WSEAS Transactions on Computers, 5.8, 1713-1719.Husler, F. Rodd-Marling, Y. (1983): Singing: The Phisical Nature of the Vocal Organ, London, Hutchinson Co.Michaelides, S. (1978): The Music of Ancient Greece. An Encyclopaedia, London, Faber and Faber.Pérez Cartagena, F.J. (2006): “ΧΟΡΟΔΙΔΑΣΚΑΛΙΑ. La dirección del coro en el drama ático”, en E. Calderón, A. Morales, M. Valverde (Eds.) KOINÒS LÓGOS. Homenaje al profesor José García López, Murcia, Ediciones de la Universidad Murcia, pp. 785-794. Pérez Cartagena, F.J. (2009): Hefestión: Métrica griega. Aristóxeno: Harmónica-rítmica. Ptolomeo: Harmónica. Introducciones, traducciones y notas de Josefa Urrea Méndez, Francisco Javier Pérez Cartagena y Pedro Redondo Reyes. Madrid, Editorial Gredos.Pianko, G. (1963): “Un comico tributo alla storia della musica greca”, Eos 53, 56-62.Pickard-Cambridge, A., Sir (1968): The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, Oxford, Clarendon Press.Pöhlmann, E. West, M.L. (2001): Documents of Ancient Greek Music. The Extant Melodies and Fragments Edited and Transcribed with Commentary, by Egert Pöhlmann and Martin L. West: Oxford, Clarendon Press.West, M.L. (1994): Ancient Greek Music, Oxford, Clarendon Press.Zarate, J.M., Ritson, C.R. y Poeppel, D. 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Euripides’ Phoenissae is a challenging work that is often overlooked by scholars of Greek drama. This study analyzes how the concept of autochthony occupies a central thematic concern of the play. On the one hand, autochthony unites humans to soil, political claims to myths, and present to past. On the other hand, autochthony was often invoked to exclude foreigners, women and exiles from political life at Athens. We observe a similar dichotomy in the Phoenissae. Autochthony unites the episode action–the story of the fraternal conflict—with the very different subject matter of the choral odes, which treat the founding myths of Thebes. By focalizing the lyric material through the perspective of marginalized female voices (Antigone and the chorus), Euripides is able to problematize the myths and rhetoric associated with autochthony. At the same time, Antigone’s departure with her father at the play’s close offers a transformation of autochthonous power into a positive religious entity. I suggest that a careful examination of the many facets of autochthony can inform our understanding of the Phoenissae with respect to dramatic structure, apparent Euripidean innovations, character motivation, stage direction and audience reception.
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As well as bringing together all the relevant evidence for the quality and activity of the chorus of drama in the fourth century, this monograph has raised certain key questions about the current understanding of the nature and development of Attic drama as a whole. First, it shows that the supposed ‘civic’ quality of the chorus of drama is, in fact, an association loaned, inappropriately, from the genre of circular, ‘dithyrambic’, choral performance. Being attentive to the cultural differences between these two genres should prompt a further re-evaluation of how to read dramatic choruses more generally. Second, the way in which key fourth-century authors such as Plato and Xenophon use the image of the chorus to discuss the concept of leadership has profoundly shaped ways of construing choreia in ancient Greek drama, and the ancient Mediterranean more generally. Armed with this knowledge, it is possible to retell the story and history of the chorus in drama.

This chapter pushes against the notion that Eva Palmer Sikelianos's work in Greece was disconnected from her non-Greek past and indifferent to “archaeological problems.” Digging deep into her papers and other sources dating between 1903 and 1940, the chapter pieces together Eva's dialogue with artists from Isadora Duncan to H. D. to George Cram Cook and Susan Glaspell to Angelos Sikelianos, who were all familiar with archaeological problems but standing at an oblique angle to them as they thought about how to stage the ancient Greek chorus. This transatlantic genealogy allows reflection on how creative work happening near ruins, yet outside the formal discipline of archaeology, responds to the place, takes on the feel of archaeological discoveries, and generates further rounds of imaginative reworking. The same genealogy brings into view how Eva's efforts to revive the tragic chorus, having transformed Isadora's experiments, traveled across the Atlantic to inform the work of Ted Shawn.

Abstract Most scholars and thinkers since Aristotle have proceeded on the assumption that the chorus of Greek drama, certainly the chorus of comedy and satyr-play and possibly the chorus of tragedy as well, originated with the cult of Dionysos. Henrichs cites a number of recent treatments, from Pickard-Cambridge and Webster 1962 through Burkert 1966 to Winnington-Ingram 1985.

Abstract A few formal terms: The basic divisions of a Greek tragedy, according to the tradition, is into prologue, parodos, episodes, and stasima. A Greek tragedy contains a variety of levels of speech, in the most general terms the meter of spoken verse (iambitrimeters) and lyric. The prologue and the episodes are usually in iambic trimeter. Characters may speak to each other or to the chorus. A lyric exchange between the chorus and one or more characters is a kommos. The parodos is the entry song of the chorus (in the Electra this takes the form of a kommos between Electra and the Chorus). A stasimon is a choral song that divides two episodes. The episodes, which are mostly in iambic trimeter, are what we would call scenes; the final episode, which ends the drama, can also be called the exodos. These choral songs are typically constructed of strophe, antistrophe, and epode. A strophe is a stanza, while an antistrophe is a stanza whose metrical form closely follows that of a strophe. An epode is a single stanza which follows a paired strophe and antistrophe, but whose metrical form is unique.

Abstract The appeal of Greek tragedy today stems not just from its content, its handling of themes like women, war, and democracy, but from its formal properties which present a unique challenge to modern actors and directors. Though the most obvious aspect is the chorus (on which see Zeitlin, above, Chapter 2, and Fischer-Lichte, below, Chapter 13), I have chosen to focus this chapter on the mask.

Abstract While historians of European culture are familiar with ancient Greek tragedy and comedy, they are unlikely to be well acquainted with the third ancient theatrical genre, satyr drama. Hundreds of satyr plays were produced, yet only Euripides’ Cyclops survives in its entirety, together with a substantial part of Sophocles’ Trackers (Ichneutae ).One of the few certainties about this enigmatic genre is that its gender orientation was more profoundly male than that of tragedy and comedy. Like them it was produced by male poets and performed by male actors, in front of an almost exclusively male audience. Yet unlike the choruses of tragedy and comedy, which could represent either females or males, the chorus of satyr drama by convention consisted of male satyrs with conspicuous phalluses.

Abstract Undoubtedly the most eminent American playwright since Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller (b. 1915) has shown considerable technical variety in his dramatic output, from the Ibsen-type ‘retrospective’ structure of All My Sons (1947), to the nearexpressionism of Death of a Salesman (1949), the quasi-Greek structure, complete with Chorus, of A View from the Bridge (rev. version, 1956), the tightly classical structure of The Price (1968) or the lyrical and dreamlike duet, Elegy for a Lady (1982). Although profoundly American, he has perhaps been appreciated more in Europe than in the United States, at any rate as far as theatrical performance is concerned.

Abstract we may compliment him by calling his performance ‘dramatic’, if he utters it with pathos and conviction, but he is none the less a narrator of a story. If, on the other hand, he comes before us and begins straightway ‘Prophet of woe, never yet have you foretold me weal ... ‘ he is an actor, and this is drama. He is, so to speak, being Agamemnon, no longer simply telling us what Agamemnon said, and it is still drama even if he is wearing everyday clothes and even if Calchas is invisible to us. Exactly when and in what circumstances a Greek poet took the crucial step of composing for an actor, we do not know. It may well be that humorous performances, in which individuals or a chorus dressed up as if they were satyrs or foreigners or old women, are of immemorial antiquity, and the birth of tragedy was simply the application of this technique to serious matter. Tragedy was an Athenian invention, and by 500 B.c. its presentation was established as a part of one of the annual festivals in honour of the god Dionysus, the City Dionysia, celebrated in spring.