The Power of Music: Ancient Greece in the Modern Musical Imaginary Tuesday and Thursday, 1:00-2:30 pm Etha Williams Harvard University ethawilliams@g.harvard.edu Music Building, Room 4 Office: N104 COURSE OBJECTIVES: This course will trace the legacy of Greek antiquity in modern music—defined broadly to stretch from 1600 (the “early modern”) to the present day (the “post-modern”). We will attend to several broad themes inherited from Greek antiquity: beliefs concerning the power of music, the relationship between music and drama, the value of different tuning systems, and the relationship between music and the cosmos. We will examine these themes through both musical works and texts about music; we will discuss composers including Peri, Lully, Beethoven, Wagner, Partch, and Xenakis and thinkers including Plato, Rousseau, and Nietzsche. Our aim will be to outline a “reception history” of Greek musical thought—one that is less concerned with whether we moderns have “gotten it right” than with the changes that old ideas undergo in new times. COURSE REQUIREMENTS: This course is designed for upper-level undergraduates and may be taken by students in any department. Some background in music history and/or theory may be useful but is not necessary for participation in the class; students in related disciplines such as Classics and Comparative Literature are especially encouraged to enroll. COURSE EXPECTATIONS: Reading, listening, and participation: Each topic for the class is allotted two days. On the first day, I will give a lecture introducing the material; on the second day, we will discuss the reading and listening. You are responsible for having read and listened carefully by this second day and for lively participation in our class discussions. Participation (including attendance) will constitute 10% of your grade.

Unit Response Papers: This course is divided into five units. For four of these, you will write brief response papers; two of these will be very short (200-400 words), and two of them will be slightly longer (500-800 words). Your papers should synthesize the readings and listenings for the units, considering both their similarities and their possible differences or conflicts. Each of these papers is due a week after the last class meeting of the unit in question. Midterm Project: You will have a small midterm project. This can take the form of a short (3-5 page) paper on a topic of your choice OR a creative project. Possible creative projects include, but are not limited to, musical performances, program notes, multimedia presentations, dialogues (in the manner of Plato and Galilei), or your own recreation of an aspect of ancient Greek music. You will turn in and give a brief (8-10 minute) presentation on your project to the class on October 28. Final research paper: This course will culminate in a 10-12 page research paper. This paper should be related to the themes of the class but should not simply recapitulate information from our readings and class discussion. Rather, you should do substantial independent research and use it to construct a compelling, original argument. You will turn in a proposal and preliminary bibliography for your paper on November 13, and you will turn in the final paper on December 16. GRADING: 10% Participation (including attendance; up to three unexcused absences) 20% Unit papers 25% Midterm project and presentation 10% Final paper proposal and bibliography 35% Final paper CALENDAR OF DUE DATES: September 25: Unit 1 response October 16: Unit II response October 28: Midterm project due; presentations in class November 4: Unit III response November 13: Final paper proposal due; discussion in class November 20: Unit IV response December 9: Unit V response December 16: Final paper TEXTBOOK: There is no textbook for this class; all of our readings will be available on Canvas as PDF files. OFFICE HOURS: If you have any concerns or questions, I am always happy to meet with you! I hold regular office hours Tuesday, 1:00-2:00 and Friday, 10:00-11:00 in N104. I am also available to meet by appointment; please e-mail me at ethawilliams@g.harvard.edu.

COURSE SCHEDULE The course is broken into five units, roughly corresponding chronologically to Greek antiquity; the seventeenth century; the eighteenth century; the nineteenth century; and the twentieth century. Each unit begins with a unit question. You don’t need to prepare anything formal for these questions, but do think about them as you do the reading; they will provide a useful jumping-off point for discussion. I have listed the readings and listenings in the order that I recommend completing them.

*** I. Introduction – Ancient Greek Thought and its Early Transmission (9/2-9/18) Unit Question: To what extent was ancient Greek musical thought a coherent system of beliefs, and to what extent did it include heterogeneous, contradictory, or conflicting elements? How were these beliefs transmitted during the medieval and Renaissance eras, and how did this transmission restructure and recontextualize these beliefs? What did it leave out; what did it add; and why? What do we know of the sound and effects of ancient Greek music?

9/2 and 9/4: Introductions; Music in Greek Mythology and Tragedy Reading (to be prepared by 9/4):

Burkholder, Grout, and Palisca, A History of Western Music, 9-21. Wilson, “Music,” in A Companion to Greek Tragedy, ed. Justina Gregor, 183-93. Ovid, The Metamorphoses, 340-49, 368-71, 337-45.

Listening (to be prepared by 9/4): Anonymous, fragment of music for Euripides’s Orestes. Please also read the brief

accompanying information in the Norton Anthology of Western Music.

9/9 and 9/11: Greek Philosophies of Music

Reading (to be prepared by 9/11): Barbera, entry on “Pythagoras” in Grove Music Online. Plato, The Republic, 82-94, 124-27, Aristotle, Politics, 227-42

Listening (to be prepared by 9/11): Anonymous, Epitaph of Seikilos. Please also read the brief accompanying information in

the Norton Anthology of Western Music

9/16 and 9/18: Early Transmission of Greek Musical Thought

Reading (to be prepared by 9/18): Thomas, “Introduction,” in Paths from Ancient Greece, ed. C.G. Thomas, 1-8. Boethius, Book 1 of Fundamentals of Music.

***

II. Recovering Greek Music in the Early Seventeenth Century: Tragedy and Tuning (9/23-10/9) Unit Question: What political and intellectual circumstances spurred seventeenth-century interest in Greek antiquity, and how did these circumstances continue to transform the legacy of Greek thought? What particular challenges or opportunities did music present? How was the relationship between antiquity and modernity construed?

9/23 and 9/25: Monody and the Power of Music: The Florentine Camerata

Reading (to be completed by 9/25): Caccini on “The Birth of a ‘New’ Music,” in Music in the Western World: A History in

Documents, ed. Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin, 143-44 Galilei, Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music: -We will all read pp. 197-243.

-In addition, read the table of contents. From this, choose a brief (no more than 5 page) section to read, and be prepared to discuss this section with the class.

Listening (to be completed by 9/25): Caccini, Le nuove musiche. We will all listen to “Dolcissimo sospiro.” In addition,

choose one more song from Le nuove musiche to examine, and be prepared to informally share your findings with the class.

DUE 9/25: Unit I Response Paper

9/30 and 10/2: Dramma per musica: Peri and Caccini’s L’Euridice Reading (to be completed by 10/2):

Rinuccini, Libretto for L’Euridice. (English translation included in the musical score; pp. xvi-xxxvii.)

Gagliano on “The Earliest Operas” in Music in the Western World: A History in Documents, ed. Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin, 147-49.

Savage, “Precursors, Precedents, Pretexts: The Institutions of Greco-Roman Theatre and the Development of European Opera,” in Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage, ed. Peter Brown and Suzana Ograjensek, 1-30.

Listening (to be completed by 10/2): Peri, L’Euridice: Prologue; Scene 1; Scene 4.

10/7 and 10/9: Ancient Tunings, Modern Keyboards Reading (to be completed by 10/9): Galilei, Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music, 84-118. Vicentino, Ancient Music Adapted to Modern Practice, 315-31.

Mersenne, Harmonie Universelle – Book on Instruments, 21-23. 349-58. Listening (to be completed by 10/9): Vicentino, “Musica prisca,” “Madonna il poco dolce.”

***

III. Progress and Origins: Figuring Greece in Enlightenment Modernity (10/14-10/23) Unit Question: In an era that increasingly defined itself as distinctively modern, how did thinkers and practicing artists redefine their relationship with antiquity? How was modernity framed in opposition to the ancient, and how did it seek to recover it? How did individuals understand the relationship between antiquity, modernity, technology, and progress?

10/14 and 10/16: Enlightened Quarrels: The Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes and the

Querelle des Bouffons Reading (to be completed by 10/16):

Thomas, Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Régime, 1647-1785, 17-52. Rousseau, “Essay on the Origin of Languages,” in Essay on the Origin of Languages and

Writings Related to Music, 317-32 Rousseau, “Letter on French Music,” in Essay on the Origin of Languages and Writings

Related to Music, 141-74. Listening (to be completed by 10/16): Lully, Armide, Excerpts: Act 5; “Enfin, il est en ma puissance” from Act 3.

Pergolesi, La Serva Padrona, Scene 2. DUE 10/16: Unit II Response Paper

10/21 and 10/23: Powers of Music: Revolution and Empire Reading (to be completed by 10/23):

Johnson, Listening in Paris, 116-136. Agnew, Enlightenment Orpheus, 73-119.

Listening (to be completed by 10/23): Gossec, “Hymne a l’être supreme.”

***

10/28: Midterm Projects Due: Midterm Project You will turn in your midterm project and give a brief (8-10 minute) presentation to the class.

***

IV. Classicisms and Romanticisms: Greece in Nineteenth-Century Germany (10/30-11/11) How did German Romanticism understand its relationship to Classical Greece? To what extent were Classicism and Romanticism construed as opposites, and to what extent were they understood as complementary? How did the legacy of Greece figure in burgeoning German nationalism? What parallels and divergences do we see with the trends we’ve examined in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries?

10/30 and 11/4: Greek Classicism and German Romanticism; Beethoven as Greek Reading (to be completed by 11/4):

Geary, “Ancient Greece and the German Cultural Imagination,” in The Politics of Appropriation: German Romantic Music and the Ancient Greek Legacy, 10-27.

Lenneberg, “Classic and Romantic: The First Usage of the Terms.” Musical Quarterly 78, no. 3 (1994): 610-25.

Nottenbohm, Zweite Beethoveniana, 329-30. (Translation provided on Canvas). Kramer, “The Harem Threshold: Turkish Music and Greek Love in Beethoven’s ‘Ode to

Joy.’” 19th-Century Music 22, no. 1 (1998): 78-90. Listening (to be completed by 11/4):

Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 (Focus on the final movement.) DUE 11/4: Unit III Response Paper

11/6 and 11/11: Wagner, Nietzsche, and the (Re)birth of Tragedy Reading (to be completed by 11/11): Millington, The Sorcerer of Bayreuth, 90-91.

Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 13-28, 111-16. Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner.

Listening (to be completed by 11/11): Wagner, Das Rheingold, Scene 1 and Siegfried, Act 3.

Bizet, Carmen: “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle” and “C’est toi! C’est moi!”

***

11/13: Final Project Proposals and Discussions Due: Final project proposal and bibliography.

This class session will be devoted to discussion of final projects. As such, please come ready to discuss your final project and to give your classmates feedback on theirs.

*** V. Recovering Greek Music in the Twentieth Century: Tragedy and Tuning (Again) (11/18-12/2) Unit Question: The twentieth century saw the advent of new models of archaeology and classical studies, as well as changing attitudes to modernity’s promises of progress. How did this reflect in the reception and refashioning of Greek ideas about music? How did appeals to antiquity function in discourses of experimental and avant-garde musics?

11/18 and 11/20: Experimental Music; Harry Partch Reading (to be completed by 11/20):

Wolff, “Crossings of Experimental Music and Greek Tragedy,” in Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage, ed. Peter Brown and Suzana Ograjensek, 285-305.

Hackbarth, “Daphne of the Dunes: The Relationship of Drama and Music.” In Harry Partch: An Anthology of Critical Perspectives, edited by David Dunn, 49-70.

Listening (to be completed by 11/20): Partch, Daphne of the Dunes.

DUE 11/20: Unit IV Response Paper

11/25 and 12/2: Xenakis’s Modern Hellenism

Reading (to be completed by 12/2): Mâche, “The Hellenism of Iannis Xenakis.” Contemporary Music Review 8, no. 1 (1993):

197-211. Xenakis, “The Origins of Stochastic Music 1.” Tempo 78 (1996): 9-12. Xenakis, Formalized Music, 180-212. Don’t get too hung up on the mathematical details

of Xenakis’s text; rather, we are interested in how he frames his inquiry in terms redolent of Greek antiquity.

Listening (to be completed by 12/2): Xenakis, Metastaseis.

Xenakis, Oresteïa.

*** DUE 12/9: Unit V Response Paper DUE 12/16: Final paper.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

COURSE READINGS

Primary Sources

Aristotle. Politics. Translated by C.D.C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998. Boethius, Anicius Severinus Manlius. Fundamentals of Music. Translated by Calvin M. Bower.

New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Galilei, Vincenzo. Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music. Translated by Claude V. Palisca.

New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Mersenne, Marin. Harmonie Universelle: The Book on Instruments. Translated by Roger E. Chapman. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1957.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Francis

Golffing. New York: Anchor Books, 1956. ———. The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. Translated by

J.M. Kennedy. New York: Russell and Russell, 1964. Nottenbohm, Gustav. Zweite Beethoveniana. Leipzig: C.F. Peters, 1887. Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by Charles Martin. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. Plato. The Republic. Translated by Tom Griffith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Essay on the Origin of Languages and Writings Related to Music.

Edited and translated by John T. Scott. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth University Press, 2009. Vicentino, Nicola. Ancient Music Adapted to Modern Practice. Translated by Maria Rika

Maniates. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Weiss, Piero and Richard Taruskin, eds. Music in the Western World: A History in Documents.

Boston: Cengage Learning, 2007. Xenakis, Iannis. Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition. Stuyvesant:

Pendragon Press, 1992. ———. “The Origins of Stochastic Music 1.” Tempo 78 (1996): 9-12

Secondary Sources

Agnew, Vanessa. Enlightenment Orpheus: The Power of Music in Other Worlds. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2008. Barbera, André. “Pythagoras.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press,

http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/22603. Brown, Peter, and Suzana Ograjensek. Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage. Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2010. Burkholder, J. Peter, Donald J. Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music. Ninth

edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 2014. Dunn, David, ed. Harry Partch: An Anthology of Critical Perspectives. London: Routledge,

2000.

Geary, Jason. The Politics of Appropriation: German Romantic Music and the Ancient Greek

Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Gregor, Justina, ed. A Companion to Greek Tragedy. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2005. Johnson, James. Listening in Paris: A Cultural History. Berkeley: University of California Press,

1996. Kramer, Lawrence. “The Harem Threshold: Turkish Music and Greek Love in Beethoven’s ‘Ode

to Joy.’” 19th-Century Music 22, no. 1 (1998): 78-90. Lenneberg, Hans. “Classic and Romantic: The First Usage of the Terms.” Musical Quarterly 78,

no. 3 (1994): 610-25. Mâche, François-Bernard. “The Hellenism of Iannis Xenakis.” Contemporary Music Review 8,

no. 1 (1993): 197-211. Millington, Barry. The Sorcerer of Bayreuth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Thomas, Carol G., ed. Paths from Ancient Greece. Leiden: Brill, 1988. Thomas, Downing A. Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Régime, 1647-1785. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2009.

COURSE LISTENINGS (ON RESERVE)

Anonymous. “Epitaph of Seikilos.”

o Recording: AC 36767, v. 1. (Norton Recorded Anthology of Western Music, 2010.) o Score in Norton Anthology of Western Music. Volume 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.

Anonymous. “Orestes.”

o Recording: AC 36767, v. 1. (Norton Recorded Anthology of Western Music, 2010.) o Score in Norton Anthology of Western Music. Volume 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.

Beethoven, Ludwig van. Symphony No. 9.

o Recording: CD 26484. (London: BBC Music, 2002.) (Many other recordings are also available!)

o Score: Available on IMSLP: http://imslp.org/wiki/Symphony_No.9,_Op.125_%28Beethoven,_Ludwig_van%29

Bizet, Georges. Carmen.

o Video recording: DVD M1500 .B625 C37 1999x. o Audio recording: Available via Naxos.

o Score: Available on IMSLP: http://imslp.org/wiki/Carmen_%28Bizet,_Georges%29 Caccini, Giulio. Le nuove musiche.

o Recording: Excerpts in CD C333.4 (BMG, 2005) and CD Anth. 327 (Channel Classics, 2005).

o Score: M3.1.C344 N86 1997. Paris: Editions Cerf, 1997. Gossec, François Joseph. Hymne à l’être supreme.

o Recording: CD 37089. (Québec: ATMA Classique, 2010.) o Score: *2009TW-179. (Paris: Au Magasin de Musique à l’usage des Fêtes nationales,

1794.) Note: This is held in the special collections in the Harvard Theatre Collection. Lully, Jean-Baptiste. Armide.

o Video recording: M1500.L84 A76 2011. (Paris: Fra Musica, 2011.) o Audio recording: CD 10889. (Arles: Harmonica Mundi Franc, 1993.) o Score: Mus 740.1.3 (III/14). (New York: G. Olms, 2003.)

Partch, Harry. Daphne of the Dunes.

o Video recording: DVD 1193. (St. Paul, MN: Innova, 2007.) o Audio recording: Available online via Alexander Street Press. o Score: Unpublished.

Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista. La Serva Padrona.

o Video recording: DVD 2401. (Halle: Arthaus Musik, 2012.) o Audio recording: CD 7335. (Freiburg: Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, 1990.) o Score: Mus 780.1.648. (London: Orion Music Publications, 1980.)

Peri, Jacopo. L’Euridice.

o Recording: On order. (Pavane Records, 1997.) o Score (and libretto): Mus 405.208 (36-37). Madison: A-R Editions, 1986.

Vicentino, Nicola. “Musica prisca” and “Madonna il poco dolce.’

o Recording: ML3809.B226 2008. Accompanying material for Patrizio Barbieri, Enharmonic: Instruments and Music 1470-1900 (Latina: Il Levante Libreria Editrice, 2008)

o Score: Mus 858.270.675. Utrecht: Diapason Press, 1990. Wagner, Richard. Das Rheingold.

o Video recording: DVD 2252. (Berlin: Unitel Classica, 2009.) o Audio recording: Available via Naxos. o Score: Available via IMSLP:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Das_Rheingold,_WWV_86A_%28Wagner,_Richard%29

Wagner, Richard. Siegfried. o Video recording: Available online via Alexander Street Press. o Audio recording: Available via Naxos. o Score: Available via IMSLP:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Siegfried,_WWV_86C_%28Wagner,_Richard%29 Xenakis, Iannis. Metasteseis.

o Recording: CD 25675. (Berlin: Col Legno, 2003.) o Score: Mus 873 .596 .235. (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1967.)

Xenakis, Iannis. Oresteïa.

o Recording: CD 23467. (Paris: Naïve, 2002.) o Score: Mus 873.596.647. (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1996.)