Rhythm in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry

The study of ancient Greek music has attracted enormous interest in the course of recent years, both as far aas socio-political and philosophical contexts are concerned and with regard to matters of musical realia. A crucial gap, however, is still present in our knowledge regarding the rhythmical interpretation of poetic texts - a field which is also of the greatest importance for early European music history and its connection to musical traditions surfacing in later evidence, both in Europe and the Near East. The present application proposes a novel method for addressing many of the related basic questions, most notably the deviation of rhythmic values from the "metrical" pattern by protraction and shortening of syllable lengths. By establishing reliable evidence through statistical methods it approaches problems of an even rhythmical flow in terms of a regular sequence of "strong" and "weak" elements as well as their relative durations. At its core is the construction of a comprehensive database of metrical and prosodic information for Greek lyric poetry from its beginnings to about the end of the fifth century BC. Its construction as well as evaluation processes are made possible by dedicated software designed by the applicant in the course of the last years, which is basically ready for use, although it will be further developed during the project in some respects. The feasibility of the entry process as well as the validity of the most important methods has been tested on a limited sample, Pindar`s Epinicians, yielding preliminary results of nevertheless great consequence. However the extension of the analysis to the entire corpus of archaic and classical Greek poetry, which represents the necessary next step of this research, requires the help of another trained classical philologist for a period of three years, as well as the assistance in data preparation by one or more persons with undergraduate skills. On the basis of such a significant textual sample, it will be possible to address important questions of ancient Greek rhythm in its development over the centuries and across poetic genres, characterised also by dialectal variety and therefore partially independent prehistory. Along more traditional philological lines, the results form a new basis for the search for social/ cultural/ emotional associations linked to particular types of rhythmic movement. This pursuit will include both detailed interpretation of particular instances and a more general statistical approach based on tagging texts with appropriate keywords. The research will be embedded within an ethnomusicological perspective, cautiously addressing possible historical continuity between ancient rhythms and those of modern traditional music of Greece and the neighbouring regions. In this way, the proposed project can contribute not only to an enhanced appreciation of a major performative component of some of the major texts at the roots of European culture, providing a new key to their interpretation and plausibly also influencing future theatrical staging, but also to a better understanding of early European music history.

Ancient Greek drama has been the subject of scholarship for more than two millennia how then can pre sent researchers still hope for ground-breaking new results? Modern technology may do the trick: with the help of specifically developed software, the ancient texts have been transformed into a database containing all kinds of information regarding their poetic forms and the language that implements these. In this way is it possible to retrieve fine-grained information about a large pool of data. One of the primary aims was the search for small yet significant differences in the use of the sounds of language: while the poetic rules distinguish only between long and short syllables, in actual language the former come in very different types. This becomes important whenever the texts were originally sung, as was the case not only for the choral song-dances of ancient drama but also for many elaborate arias performed by the actors. Indeed it was possible to prove that poet-composers such as Aechylus, Sophocles and Euripides did not use language indiscriminately, but made sure their songs would sound good. In particular, they avoided setting extended notes to syllables which would not sustain the voice. Consequently careful statistical methods could pinpoint locations with such extra-long notes, leading to a better understanding of the original rhythm, which the language otherwise reveals only incompletely an important step towards understanding the musical setting. Similarly, the computer helped unravelling the vexed question of the emotional and social associations attached to particular rhythms, assisting the researcher in creating relevant word fields and subsequently evaluating their distribution within different songs. In this way, the interplay between metre and gender becomes visible as well as the dichotomy between the chorus and the actors, the musical side of which had already been commented on in antiquity. In this way, new avenues of interpretation are opened up: understanding the meaning of metre is prerequisite, for instance, to detecting instances where a poet may have created a contrast between words and music, producing subtle irony that the original audience would have naturally appreciated.