Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-m9kch Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-07T07:59:51.826Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Homeric Recitation, with Input from Phonology and Philology*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

Avery D. Andrews
Avery D. Andrews*
Affiliation:
The Australian National University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is widely assumed that the aoidoi, the original performers of Homeric poetry or its antecedents, sang a chant restricted to three or four notes, to the accompaniment of a 4-stringed instrument (Danek and Hagel 1995, Marshall 2002). The prestigious later performers from classical times, the rhapsodes, did not have the instrument, and the vocal characteristics of their performances are quite uncertain. In this paper I will discuss various aspects of a conjectured rhapsodic style, based on the reconstruction of the Ancient Greek pitch accent by Devine and Stephens (1994), together with some consideration of issues concerning the hexameter rhythm. For some initial orientation, it might be useful to listen to the short sample on the CD accompanying this issue; various features of the style will be discussed with reference to that.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 39 , 2005 , pp. 1 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I would like to acknowledge Andrew Devine and Alan Prince for advice and encouragement on aspects of the metrical analysis of this material; Wendy Brazil, Peter Latona, Elizabeth Minchin and Christopher Mackie for organising various opportunities to perform; Elizabeth Minchin again for helping with the presentation of the analysis and other aspects of the preparation of this paper; and an anonymous reviewer for useful observations and bibliography. All errors and faults of exposition are, of course, due to me.

References

Allen, W. Sydney. (1973). Rhythm and Metre. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, Stephen R. (1973). ‘u-Umlaut and Skaldic Verse”, in Anderson, S.R. and Kiparsky, Paul (eds), A Festschrift for Morris Halle. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Bakker, Egbert J. (1988). Linguistic Formulas in Homer. Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boiling, G.M. (1913). ‘Contributions to the Study of Homeric Metre. II: Length by Position’, American Journal of Philology 34: 153–171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Matthew. (1997). Out of Line. Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Daitz, Stephen. (1991). ‘On Reading Homer Aloud: To Pause or Not to Pause’, American Journal of Philology 112: 149–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danek, Georg and Hagel, Stephan. (1995). ‘Homer-Singen’. Wiener Humanistiche Blätter, 5–20. Also available at http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/sh/(as of 02.08.2002).Google Scholar
Devine, A.M. and Stephens, Laurence D. (1991). ‘Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Compositione Verborum XI: Reconstructing the Phonetics of the Greek Accent’, TAPA 121: 229–286.Google Scholar
Devine, A.M. and Stephens, Laurence D. (1994). The Prosody of Greek Speech. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drewitt, J.A.J. (1908). Some Differences between Speech-scansion and Narrative-scansion in Homeric Verse', Classical Quarterly 2: 94–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos and Jacobs, Haike. (1998). Understanding Phonology. Arnold, London.Google Scholar
Halle, M. and Keyser, S.J. (1981) ‘Metrica’. Enciclopedia Enaudi Vol. 9: 254–284. Torino.Google Scholar
Hardie, W.R. (1920). Res Metrica. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kahane, Ahuvia. (1994). The Interpretation of Order: A Study in the Poetics of Homeric Repetition. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keyser, Samuel J. and Clements, Nicholas. (1983). CV Phonology, MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lehrs, Karl. (1882). De Aristarchi Studiis Homericis [reprinted 1964]. Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, Hildesheim.Google Scholar
Marshall, Christopher. (2002). ‘The Melody of Homeric Performance’, talk delivered at the Fifth Biennial Conference on Orality and Literacy in Ancient Greece, University of Melbourne.Google Scholar
Nagy, Gregory. (1996). Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nagy, Gregory.(2000a). ‘Reading Greek Poetry Aloud: Evidence from the Bacchylides Papyri’, Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, Nuova Sena 64, N 1 (2000): 7–27.Google Scholar
Nagy, Gregory.(2000b). Review of West, Martin L. (ed.), Homeri Ilias. Recensuit / testimonia congessit. Volumen prius, rhapsodias I-XII continens. (Stuttgart and Leipzig: Bibliotheca Teubneriana. 1998), in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2000.09.12. Online at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2000/2000-09-12.html (as of 11.06.2006).Google Scholar
O'Neill, E.G. Jr. (1942). ‘The Localization of Metrical Word-Types in the Greek Hexameter. Homer, Hesiod and the Alexandrians’, Yale Classical Studies 8: 105–178.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet and Beckman, Mary. (1988). Japanese Tone Structure. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Prince, Alan S. (1989). ‘Metrical Forms’, in Kiparsky, P. and Youmans, G. (eds), Rhythm and Meter. Academic Press, San Diego: 45–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Raalte, Marlein. (1986). Rhythm and Meter: Towards a Systematic Description of Greek Stichic Verse. Van Gorcum, Assen.Google Scholar
Selkirk, Elizabeth O. (1984). Phonology and Syntax: The Relation between Sound and Structure. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Steriade, Donca. (1988). ‘Greek Accent: A Case for Preserving Structure’, Linguistic Inquiry 19: 271–314.Google Scholar
Sturtevant, R.H. (1921). ‘Word-ends and Pauses in the Hexameter’, American Journal of Philology 42: 289–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sturtevant, R.H. (1924). ‘The Doctrine of Caesura, a Philological Ghost’, American Journal of Philology 45: 329–350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Usher, S. (1985). Dionysius of Halicarnassus: The Critical Essays in Two Volumes. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA.Google Scholar
Wyatt, W.F. (1992). ‘Daitz on Reading Homeric Verse“, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 02.07.09.Google Scholar