CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: Ancient World, Modern Music II at CAMWS 2024

Bloomsbury Academics, 2023

This book explores the pivotal role played by ancient mousike-in all its facets-in the development of musical practices and ideas throughout history. The discussion is structured around the key concepts, theoretical models, and aesthetic issues at play – from the educational and therapeutic value of music to its place in the ideal of cosmic harmony and its relationship to the senses and emotions – as well as the function of music in debates around individual and cultural identity. What emerges is a timely reassessment of the paradigmatic value of the Greek model in the musical reception of antiquity in different historical periods. It highlights the ongoing contribution of mousike to modern cultural debates within the realms of classics, musicology, philosophy, aesthetics, anthropology, performance, and cultural studies, as well as in artistic environments, and offers a clear and comprehensive account of its inexhaustible source of inspiration for musicians, theorists, scholars, and antiquarians across the centuries.

2020

Zwischen dem 5. und 1. Jhdt. v. Chr. betrachteten politische Theoretiker in China und Europa Musik als nützlichen Maßstab für den politischen Charakter und Zustand von Gesellschaften und ihren Machthabern. Auch wenn ihre Ansichten keiner wissenschaftlichen Basis entsprangen, können schriftliche Überlieferungen und archäologische Quellen heute herangezogen werden, um Musik und damit zusammenhängende kulturelle Äußerungen im Umfeld der Macht und ihren unmittelbaren Einflussbereichen zu verorten. Sie können so über Identität, Selbstverständnis, Ansehen und Status informieren: vom Haushalt über den Staat, bei Eroberungen und Machtausübung, im Fall von Widerständen und Rebellionen sowie in der Rechtsprechung, Diplomatie und Schlichtung. Allem Anschein nach können diese Quellen in der Tat etwas Neues über Machtbeziehungen, Ideologie und politischen Wandel in der antiken Welt vermitteln. Sie dienen zudem als indirekter Indikator für politische agency in schriftlosem Umfeld.

Agnès Garcia-Ventura, Claudia Tavolieri, Lorenzo Verderame, The Study of Musical Performance in Antiquity: Archaeology and Written Sources, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2018, 2018

This collection of eleven essays provides the reader with some valuable insights into the richness of sources dealing with music and musical performance scattered over 3000 years and covering a wide range of geographies, from Syria to Iberia, through Greece and Rome. The volume, then, offers a series of examinations of literary data and materials from different areas of the Classical World and the Near East in ancient times and in late Antiquity, examined both synchronically and diachronically, in some cases in dialogue with one another. This broad treatment makes this collection of interest to historians, archaeologists, philologists and musicians, providing them with a multi-faceted volume which guides them towards a fuller understanding of ancient societies and which heightens the awareness of the importance of music as a transversal phenomenon. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations and Tables .................................................................. vii Preface ........................................................................................................ xi Eleonora Rocconi Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 The Study of Musical Performance in Antiquity Agnès Garcia-Ventura, Claudia Tavolieri and Lorenzo Verderame Chapter One................................................................................................. 9 The First Ancient Near Eastern Written Sources on Musicians’ Activity and Performance: The Ebla Archives—A Glance at the 3rd Millennium BCE Syrian Evidence Maria Vittoria Tonietti Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 39 “The Poor Musician” in Ancient Near Eastern Texts and Images Regine Pruzsinszky Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 59 Singing and Singers in 2nd Millennium Babylonia: A New Look at Selected Texts and Images Dahlia Shehata Chapter Four.............................................................................................. 93 Textual, Iconographical, and Archaeological Evidence for the Performance of Ancient Egyptian Music Heidi Köpp-Junk Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 121 Potential Musical Instructions in Ancient Israel Theodore W. Burgh Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 137 Dancing Myths: Musical Performances with Mythological Subjects from Greece to Etruria Daniele F. Maras Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 155 Performative Aspects of Music in Sacred Contexts of the Western Greeks Angela Bellia Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 173 The Aulos and the Trumpet: Music, Gender and Elites in Iberian Culture (4th to 1st Century BCE) Raquel Jiménez Pasalodos and Peter/Pippa Holmes Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 207 Clues of Roman Soundscapes around Vesuvius: Some Case Studies Mirco Mungari Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 227 Tibia multifora, multiforatilis, multiforabilis... Depictions of a “Many-holed” Tibia in Written Sources Kamila Wysłucha Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 247 Body and Soul: The Dangers of Music and Song in Syriac Christianity Claudia Tavolieri

Is music just matter of hearing and producing notes? And is it of interest just to musicians? By exploring different authors and philosophical trends of the Roman Empire, from Philo of Alexandria to Alexander of Aphrodisias, from the rebirth of Platonism with Plutarch to the last Neoplatonists, this book sheds light on different ways in which music and musical notions were made a crucial part of philosophical discourse. Far from being mere metaphors, notions such as harmony, concord and attunement became key philosophical tools in order to better grasp and conceptualise fundamental notions in philosophical debates from cosmology to ethics and from epistemology to theology. The volume is written by a distinguished international team of contributors.