The best assemblage of sources relating to Greek music in general is that of Barker (1984-89; 2 volumes), who also provides excellent guiding commentary on all of the major points of dispute; West 1992 and Landels 1999 are the most thorough synthetic studies, and provide the best discussion of all technical matters, including the musical papyri. On the latter see also Pcihlmann and West 2001. The material specifically relating to the theater is presented in the original Greek in Pickard-Cambridge 1988, 257-62, and in English in Csapo and Slater 1995, 331-48; 331-34 of the latter give an excellent introduction to the material in its historical context. Winnington-Ingram 1968 is a fundamental study of the difficult topic of the musical modes. For further reading on the way the Athenians conceived of tragedy as a ‘‘choral’’ event, see Wilson 2000a. A valuable introduction to Aristotle on tragedy is provided by Halliwell 1986. Hall 1996b gives a good account of the possible reasons behind the extreme formalism of Aristotle’s approach. Sifakis 2001, chapter 4 (‘‘The function and significance of music in tragedy’’), offers a challenging new interpretation, arguing that Aristotle recognized a far greater role than is normally thought for music in tragedy as a means of ethical and emotional imitation and persuasion.
Sociological study of Greek music is a relatively underdeveloped area. Stephanis 1988 is a scholarly prosopography of theatrical and musical performers and will be an invaluable resource for such work. Csapo 2004 is the first major sociological study of the momentous fracture in Greek music and social practice known as the New Music. Wilson 1999 and 2002 study the aulos and its players from a largely sociological perspective. Hall 1999a and 2002 are important studies of the rise of the actor-singer virtuoso, the relationship between song types, gender, and status in tragedy, and much else. Some of the contributions to Cassio, Musti, and Rossi 2000 are in a similar vein.
Much of interest has been written recently on the chorus, and on tragedy’s staging of musical traditions by means of the chorus (and otherwise): see Henrichs 1994-95, as well as the other contributors to the Arion volume in which this appears, Gould 1996, Goldhill 1996, Calame 1999, Stehle 2004, and Wilson and Taplin 1993 on the Oresteia. The related topic of tragedy’s own formulation of a specifically tragic sense of mousike is well discussed by Segal 1993 and Loraux 2002; see also Wilson 1999-2000 on Euripides.
For the reperformance and spread of tragedy outside Athens see Easterling 1994, Le Guen 1995, Taplin 1999b and Allan 2001a. On the question of musical transmission, see the interesting work of Fleming 1999.
A Companion to Greek Tragedy Edited by Justina Gregory Copyright © 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
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