scholarly journals Transcribing Greece, Arranging France: Bourgault-Ducoudray’s Performances of Authenticity and Innovation

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-168
Author(s):  
Peter Asimov
Keyword(s):  
Music History ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Ethnic Nationalism ◽  
Scholarly Research ◽  
Artistic Integrity ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Paris Conservatoire

Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray (1840–1910), composer, folklorist, and long-time professor of music history at the Paris Conservatoire, dedicated intense energies to the propagation of ancient Greek modes as a modern resource for French composition. Instigated by his 1875 folk-song collection mission in Greece and Anatolia, Bourgault-Ducoudray’s attraction to Greek modes was bolstered by ideological commitments to Aryanism (nourished by his relationship and correspondence with philologist Émile Burnouf), and further reinforced by his observation of “Greek modes” in Russian and Breton folk song. This article examines how Bourgault-Ducoudray translated his quasi-philological analyses into an artistic agenda through techniques of transcription, arrangement, and composition. Beginning with a close reading of his important collection, Trente mélodies populaires de Grèce et d’Orient (1876), a continuity is established between his transcriptive and compositional practices, with particular attention paid to Bourgault-Ducoudray’s performances of authenticity through calibrated scientific and artistic rhetoric. I then turn to the reception of Bourgault-Ducoudray’s collection by two composers—Alfred Bruneau and Camille Saint-Saëns—who rearranged his Greek songs in different contexts. Treating the songs with remarkable plasticity, they appropriated Bourgault-Ducoudray’s authority to enhance representations of “oriental” and “ancient” worlds, negotiating a balance between scholarly research and artistic integrity. The article concludes by returning to Bourgault-Ducoudray’s work in the 1880s—a period during which the musical and ideological ambitions of his song arrangements were magnified to an operatic scale—culminating in a rereading of his Thamara (1891) in light of his ethnic nationalism.

scholarly journals Urbanisme régulier, occupation des campagnes et rapports interethniques en Grande-Grèce

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (29) ◽  
pp. 199
Author(s):  
Airton Pollini
Keyword(s):  
The South ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
South Italy ◽  
Native Populations ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Archaeological Work ◽  
Greek Colonization ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Written Sources

L’Italie du Sud est probablement la région la mieux connue du monde grec antique. Quelques sources écrites mais surtout des études archéologiques menées depuis longtemps ont permis le développement des recherches sur plusieurs aspects au cœur de la thématique de la colonisation grecque. Ce travail se concentre sur trois aspects essentiels : l’appropriation de l’espace colonial, l’interaction avec les populations indigènes et l’urbanisation des nouvelles installations. The South Italy is probably the best known region of the ancient Greek world. Some written sources but especially archaeological work undertaken for a long time allowed the development of research on several aspects at the heart of the issues of Greek colonization. This paper concentrates on three essential aspects: the appropriation of colonial space, the interaction with the native populations, and the urbanization of new establishments.

Gilding American History through Song Culture in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

2018 ◽  
pp. 65-82
Author(s):  
Ryan Platte
Keyword(s):  
Technological Change ◽  
American History ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
American South ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The Past ◽  
Epochal Change ◽  
Depression Era

In the first of two chapters investigating the role of Homeric epic in fabricating golden ages, Platte reveals how Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which proclaims its debt to Homer’s Odyssey in the opening credits, also re-enacts Homeric epic’s creation of a golden age. Platte focuses on the role of song in generating ancient and modern societies’ gilded memories of the past, including the nostalgia-laden misremembering of the Depression-era American South in which the film is set. Platte emphasizes how technological change affected the American folk-song tradition through recording – a phenomenon similar to that which changed Greek song culture into “Homeric” epic. By focusing on a moment of epochal change, the filmmakers undercut the notion that folk music is a simple and genuine artefact of the past. Instead, invoking nostalgia through song exposes the artificiality of the traffic in nostalgia, which has shaped attitudes toward the ancient Greek and modern American pasts. Through the protagonist’s encounter with two Homer avatars, the Coens dramatize both the process of nostalgia-creation for such a golden age and the rejection of attempts to politically weaponize it: in this case, by obscuring racism in romantic depictions of the “Old South.”

Prologue

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Daniel Oro
Keyword(s):  
Stable State ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Ebro Delta ◽  
Suitable Habitat ◽  
World Population ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Critical Transitions ◽  
Social Species ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Eventual Collapse

The idea of combining social species, information, perturbations, and nonlinear responses related to dispersal originated naively a long time ago, in the Gulf of Roses in the western Mediterranean. As a kid, I used to spend holidays in a tiny village nearby the ruins of Empuries, a magical place where an ancient Greek colony was founded in 575 BC, later occupied by the Romans. I remember going to the beach where I would place my towel sheltered from the wind behind a large section of the ancient Greek dock built on huge stones. More than 2100 years later, one can still enjoy the mosaics, the temple columns, and the large walls protecting the Roman city from the outside. Once, while visiting this place with my parents, I asked them why that magnificent settlement was abandoned, vanished, and was buried by dust, but I did not get a convincing answer (even now, I would not be able to answer this question if asked by my own kids). Archaeologists believe that the collapse of Empuries was caused by a combination of factors, namely the appearance of other flourishing communities (Barcino and Tarraco, or Barcelona and Tarragona as they are known today) and a perturbed environmental regime, caused by an accumulation of sediments resulting from a nearby river, which disabled the use of the harbour. These factors likely contributed to dispersal, which ended up in the abandonment of the city. In any case, my wonderings about Empuries remained dormant for the next 40 years. But these questions slowly awakened when one of my fieldwork studies monitoring Audouin’s gulls at the Ebro Delta was unexpectedly affected by a perturbation that began in the mid-1990s. This breeding patch, which came to hold almost 75% of the total world population of this once endangered species, has collapsed in recent times, but strikingly it remained apparently resilient for many years (Figure P1). The Ebro Delta shared with Empuries the characteristic of being an exceptionally suitable habitat allowing a population to flourish, prior to eventual collapse. Empuries and the Ebro Delta represent all of the issues I have come to be interested in as a researcher: a social group thriving in a favourable patch, perturbations generating dispersal, and a nonlinear response leading to patch extinction (as a form of a new stable state). Some years ago a reading of Marten Scheffer’s book about critical transitions was also very inspiring. Understanding why Empuries and the Ebro Delta collapsed has intrigued my curiosity over the past several years, and has led me to take the leap in writing this book....

“To Give Greece Back to the Greeks”

2018 ◽  
pp. 107-138
Author(s):  
Samuel N. Dorf
Keyword(s):  
Modern Dance ◽  
Silent Film ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Ritual Music ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Social Events ◽  
Rite Of Spring ◽  
Le Sacre Du Printemps

Eva Palmer Sikelianos, along with her husband, the poet Angehlos Sikelianos, founded the first modern Delphic Festival in 1927 in an effort to revive the ancient Greek rites that had taken place on that spot more than twenty-five hundred years before. This chapter explores Palmer Sikelianos’s choreography, rituals, music, and dramaturgy for her reconstructed Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus in light of her research on ancient Greek culture, conducted in both Paris and modern Greece. Based on silent film records of Palmer Sikelianos’s 1930 festival, her autobiography, her collaborations with Natalie Clifford Barney on Greek-themed theatricals in the early 1900s, and comparisons to the movement vocabulary and other contemporary stagings of ancient Greek festivals and sport, the chapter demonstrates how Palmer Sikelianos navigated between the needs and methods of the archaeologist and those of the performer. She blended the oldest sources on ancient Greek ritual music and dance that she could find with what she saw as an authentic “spirit” of Greek culture that she observed in modern Greek society. Her performances drew from archival/archaeological courses (ancient treatises, dance iconography) and lived practices (folk song, modern dance, Byzantine chant traditions). Like the Ballets Russes’s re-enactment of ancient Greece in Daphnis et Cholé and L’Après-midi d’un Fauné and pagan Rus’s in Le Sacre du printemps [The Rite of Spring], Palmer Sikelianos’s project to re-enact “authentic” Greek theater and choreography illustrates that theories of theatrical historical reconstruction in the early twentieth century were heavily influence by contemporary theatrical, political, and social events.

The Ambiguous Ethics of Music’s Ineffability: A Brief Reflection on the Recent Thought of Michael Gallope and Carolyn Abbate

2020 ◽  
Vol 145 (1) ◽  
pp. 229-250
Author(s):  
MARTIN SCHERZINGER
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Music History ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Ernst Bloch ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
The Face ◽  
Auditory Experience ◽  
Synergistic Relationship

Michael Gallope’s book Deep Refrains is an in-depth study of the ineffable core of musical experience.4 But it engages ineffability without eliminating the pragmatic material of music’s economic, technological and even ethical mediations; and it posits a synergistic relationship between these realms. Gallope casts equal doubt on the determinism that construes music’s ineffability as wholly absorbed in mediation and on the vitalism that construes it as radically open. Framed by and theoretically grounded in the thinking of four twentieth-century philosophers (Ernst Bloch, Theodor W. Adorno, Vladimir Jankélévitch and Gilles Deleuze), the book deftly steers between the Scylla of music’s irreducible sensuous materiality (and its attendant invitation to decipherment) and the Charybdis of its elusive ineffability (and its attendant vanishing act in the face of decipherment). The book begins by reflecting on the fascinations and prohibitions of the harmoniaia in ancient Greek philosophy. Already here, Gallope revises the standard interpretation of these founding texts, demonstrating the ways in which Socrates, Glaucon, Aristotle and others in fact consider music as at once deeply mysterious and also strictly rule-governed. This conception of music’sperplexing precision is shown to be shared in ‘global’ contexts less available to music history, including (for example) the Ikhwan Al-Safa, an eleventh-century priesthood of Islamic scholars. At the same time, Gallope draws attention to the continuity between simplified taxonomies of the ancients and the instrumentalization of their axioms for contemporary engagements with affect, so rampant in the era of emerging neuromedia. Instead of recoiling from music’s indeterminacy (retreating to silence, say, or insisting on music’s unspeakable mystery), Gallope attempts to unpack the critical potential at the heart of auditory experience. On the other hand, he argues, such potential is not harnessed by marking the movements of music’s conceptual nomenclatures alone. Noting that music ‘never speaks like a language, nor is it entirely nonlinguistic’, Gallope seeks to account for the specificity of its ‘vague impact’.5 In other words, while there is a residue of conceptual mediation at work in all sonic encounter, music’s ‘sensory impact’ cannot be subsumed by that residue.

scholarly journals Cerebral localization of the mind and higher functions The beginnings

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eliasz Engelhardt
Keyword(s):  
Nervous Tissue ◽  
The Body ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Mental Functions ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Cerebral Localization ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Higher Mental Functions ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Abstract The debates about the mind and its higher functions, and attempts to locate them in the body, have represented a subject of interest of innumerable sages since ancient times. The doubt concerning the part of the body that housed these functions, the heart (cardiocentric doctrine) or the brain (cephalocentric doctrine), drove the search. The Egyptians, millennia ago, held a cardiocentric view. A very long time later, ancient Greek scholars took up the theme anew, but remained undecided between the heart and the brain, a controversy that lasted for centuries. The cephalocentric view prevailed, and a new inquiry ensued about the location of these functions within the brain, the ventricles or the nervous tissue, which also continued for centuries. The latter localization, although initially inaccurate, gained traction. However, it represented only a beginning, as further studies in the centuries that followed revealed more precise definitions and localizations of the higher mental functions.

On the Rules Regulating the Celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries

1959 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Sokolowski
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
Real Problem ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Easy Task ◽  
Classical Studies ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Eleusinian Mysteries

The old and very illegible inscription from Athens containing the charter of the Eleusinian Mysteries was happily completed by a few small fragments discovered during the American excavations on the Agora. It was not an easy task for Professor B. D. Meritt to bring together the broken pieces and the stone bearing the inscription (now in the British Museum). He did it with his usual epigraphical expertness and contributed very much to the reading and to the restoration of a document which has been a real problem to many scholars for a long time. Of course, the inscription so old and so badly preserved will continue to be debated by specialists in different fields of Classical studies, but the part of Professor Meritt in elucidating this important testimony of the ancient Greek cult always will be gratefully appreciated. I should like to discuss some passages of the document in question in the hope that small changes in certain lines may perhaps make it more intelligible.

scholarly journals Annotations and the Ancient Greek Hero: Past, Present, and Future

Comunicar ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (44) ◽  
pp. 45-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard Muellner
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Video Annotation ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Self Assessment ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
Professional Singers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Complete Set ◽  
Poetic Texts

Evidence for annotating Homeric poetry in Ancient Greece is as old as the 5th Century BCE, when the «Iliad» and «Odyssey» were performed by professional singers/composers who also performed annotations to the poetry in answer to questions from their audiences. As the long transition from a song culture into a literate society took place in Ancient Greece from the 8th to the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE, annotations were gradually incorporated into written poetic texts. By the 10th Century CE, the quantity of written annotations in the margins of medieval manuscripts has become huge. For the first two versions of «The Ancient Hero», a HarvardX MOOC, it was not possible to implement the set of annotation tools that we requested as a vehicle for close reading and assessment. Using a partial system, we were able to create a semblance of annotations in close reading self-assessment exercises. For the anticipated third version, we expect to have a complete set of textual and video annotation tools developed for HarvardX, including semantic tagging and full sharing of annotations. Such a system, which promises to make the educational experience more effective, will also inaugurate a digital phase in the long history of Homeric annotation.Las evidencias de anotaciones en la poesía homérica de la Antigua Grecia se remontan al siglo V (a.C.), cuando ya la «Ilíada» y la «Odisea» eran representadas por cantantes profesionales/compositores, que hacían anotaciones en la poesía para responder a los interrogantes de su público. A medida que la transición, desde una cultura de la canción a una sociedad alfabetizada, aconteció en este período de la Antigua Grecia, entre el siglo VIII al I y II (a.C.), las anotaciones se incorporaron poco a poco en los escritos poéticos. La cantidad de anotaciones escritas en los márgenes de los manuscritos medievales se volvió enorme hacia el siglo X. En las dos primeras versiones de «The Ancient Hero» en el MOOC de HarvardX no fue posible utilizar el conjunto de herramientas de anotación solicitadas como medio para una atenta evaluación de las lecturas. Utilizando un sistema parcial, hemos sido capaces de crear aparentes anotaciones en los primeros ejercicios de autoevaluación de lectura. En la tercera versión, disponemos ya de un conjunto completo de herramientas de anotaciones de texto y de vídeo, desarrollados para HarvardX, incluyendo etiquetado semántico y anotaciones compartidas. Dicho sistema nos permitirá una experiencia educativa más eficaz, inaugurando también una fase digital en la larga historia de la anotación homérica.

UNDERSTANDING DELPHI THROUGH TIBET

2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Flower
Keyword(s):  
Exact Nature ◽  
Altered Consciousness ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Religion ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Mount Parnassus ◽  
North Western ◽  
Western Greece ◽  
Academic Debate

The question of the exact nature of the Pythia's expertise has been the subject of academic debate for a very long time. It would indeed not be an exaggeration to say that this has been, and continues to be, one of the most controversial questions in the study of ancient Greek religion. Modern scholars are sharply divided over whether any inspired female oracles, and especially the Pythia at Delphi, had the ability to prophesy in hexameter verse without male assistance. During the classical period the two most famous oracles were those of Zeus at Dodona in Epirus in north-western Greece and of Apollo at Delphi, which was located on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus. According to Plato (Phaedrus244), the Delphic priestess, as well as the priestesses at Dodona, prophesied in a state of altered consciousness (which he callsmania), and were practitioners of ‘inspired prophecy’ (mantikē entheos).

scholarly journals Atossa’s Dream Yoking Music and Dance, Antiquity and Modernity in Maurice Emmanuel’s Salamine (1929)

2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 27-34
Author(s):  
Samuel N. Dorf
Keyword(s):  
Music History ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Dance History ◽  
Dance Culture ◽  
Ballets Russes ◽  
Creative Media

This essay explores the conflicting trends of tradition and modernism, unity and independence in Parisian musical and dance culture in the late 1920s through an analysis of Maurice Emmanuel’s (1863-1938) aesthetics of contemporary and ancient Greek music and dance. It begins by outlining and critiquing Emmanuel’s relevant scholarly contributions to ancient Greek dance history and music history before demonstrating how these tensions manifested in the 1929 production of Emmanuel’s opera Salamine based on Aeschylus’s The Persians. Exploring Emmanuel’s aesthetics of music and dance (ancient and modern) affords a unique opportunity to see how these creative media were theorized and practiced in the tumultuous years after the Ballets russes, while illustrating some of the conflicts between what Léandre Vaillat termed “the academic and the eurhythmic” in dance and music.

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