Too long, W. suggests in the preface to this timely new book, has the musicality of Greek tragedy been neglected by scholars. In W.’s view, this is due to the lack of contemporary musical genres to which we can compare certain components of tragedy (one could add, the absence of performances in ancient Greek is also a contributing factor, as is the near total absence of musical notations transmitted since the fifth century bce, with little more surviving than a fragment from Euripides’ Orestes). The specific aspect for which W. suggests we can find no comparison is tragedy's mousikê, a term deployed expansively to include music, song and dance. The subject is not entirely free of doxographic lineage; the tragic chorus, which is central to this work, has attracted much recent attention (J. Billings, F. Budelmann and F. Macintosh [2013], R. Gagné and M. Hopman [2013], C. Calame [2017]). Likewise, the New Music (A. D'Angour [2007]) and Aristotelian embolima (L. Jackson, forthcoming) retain a place in contemporary scholarly discussion. But research that encapsulates these specialisms within a single analysis has not been previously attempted and is all the more necessary with the renewed focus on the chorus in tragedy and mousikê in non-tragic settings. What does exist is the well-attested ancient view that mousikê was a critical component of tragedy. Moreover, primary sources present Euripides’ treatment of this feature as highly innovative, especially towards the end of the fifth century. Through detailed analysis of four late tragedies, W. explores the nature of this innovation and, by doing so, also offers a fresh view on the ways in which mousikê contributes to this dramatic form. Along the way, an admirable defence is made of Euripides’ innovation in response to substantial ancient criticism.
The work includes helpful introductory chapters on technical and theoretical aspects of mousikê, which equip the reader with the vital apparatus through which to better understand W.’s arguments, often presented with precise and abundant terminological detail. These sections also foreground key contexts of the book, such as Euripides’ handling of mousikê within a broader cultural revolution, including the (contested) emergence of New Music of the late fifth century, ancient critical views on Euripides’ innovations in dramaturgy and the changing role of the chorus in tragedy, the last being predominant.
The importance of the chorus to W.’s arguments is seen most clearly in the first substantive chapter, on Euripides’ Electra. Here W. makes many claims about the chorus: their generative and allusive power, their imaginative suggestion, self-referentiality, embodiment of a social group and representation of social separation from Electra. A dislocating/relocating argument is offered for the role of choral songs relating to the play's mythos, and convincing evidence is presented. The passage W. quotes from the choral ode at the beginning of the second stasimon is especially memorable – here mousikê transports the play from country to city, mountains to Argos (this point on dis/location is picked up again in Chapter 5 on Iphigenia in Aulis).
The theme of dislocation continues into the following chapter, which opens with a quote on the 9/11 attacks. This is used as an introduction to Trojan Woman, which W. claims asks the question of what dance and music we can perform in the face of loss and destruction. It is a neat opening that allows W. to (wisely) mitigate an overly narrow interpretative approach by making reference to the historical context of the play. The interpretative focus throughout is on lament, and good arguments are put forward for the importance of this type of song for situating mousikê centrally to the dramatic narrative of Trojan Women. By this point it is clear that W.’s work is not overly concerned with aesthetics, which perhaps it could be. Bloch's early words on music are especially germane: ‘[a] great work of art is a reflection, a star of anticipation and a song of consolation on the way home through darkness’ (Geist der Utopia [1964], p. 151) and point to ways in which the research could be expanded.
In Chapter 4, on Helen, W. makes a bold claim: that in this play Euripides revolutionises the entire structure of Athenian tragedy. While counter-arguments can be made for Helen as sui generis experimentation by Euripides, or that it marks the beginning of something paradigmatically different, the analysis is sustained and engaging. The opening section on the Siren chorus enriches the discussion greatly, likewise the linking of the Sirens to Persephone and thus the chthonic (due to the play's staging by the grave of Proteus). Similarly, the identification between Helen and the nightingale is highly effective in framing mousikê within both a dramatic structure and a wider lyrical context. And, as throughout, W. has a wonderful facility for picking out key terms to provide colour, such as the hapax philoprosoidiai (‘fondness for modulation’), used by Euripides via the chorus to describe the nightingale's song and found in his fragmentary Cresphontes. More than any other chapter, this one celebrates the sophistication of Euripides’ crafting of the play within a large and complicated mythos, his narrative innovation, through the introduction of Helen's phantasma and, relatedly, his conscious interperformative/intertextual links to archaic lyric.
The playful atmosphere W. finds in Helen could hardly be in greater contrast to the sense of foreboding highlighted in the final chapter, on Iphigenia in Aulis. Indeed the two plays are presented as having inversely related structures. W. adds discussion of the physical dimension of mousikê, in the form of the kinetic movement of the choreuts, to earlier research on the visual, namely F. Zeitlin's suggestion that the choral song of the parodos creates an ecphrasis (1994, pp. 161–71). An extended analysis follows of parts of choral song and dance that allude to the Nereid statues fixed to the prows of Achilles and his Myrmidons’ boats. This neatly links the imaginative suggestion through song and dance to movement on sea (Nereids, dolphin, chorus etc.), but underplays the ominous metaphoric impact regarding the powerlessness of women in the Geek war machine. An interesting, and perhaps stronger, argument for Euripides’ innovation in this play comes in the discussion of the role of the syrinx and aulos and the way in which ‘complex mimetic layering’ effected by the reversed representations of the two instruments allows the audience to be delivered to Mount Ida in the past whilst keeping mentally fixed on the present and the Greek army – a very sophisticated and powerful idea.
In the conclusion W. considers the audience response to Euripides’ mousikê, taking the reader back to the framing argument on the absence of contemporary generic comparators. Their immersion in a choral culture, W. says, would have allowed intimate empathy for ‘the affective force that the mix of metamusical language and live performance must have had’. W. also sets out the reasons for not including Bacchae more fully as a case study, stating that the play does not have the same focus on doubleness – on location/dislocation – as the other plays included. In terms of choral song, perhaps yes, but the play does contain aspects of doubleness, famously at 918–19, which, it has been argued, helps the archaising effect of Euripides’ work (R. Seaford [1987], pp. 76–8). This conscious calling back to older forms of ritual is one way in which Euripides was considered to innovate in his late plays.
Regardless of this very minor quibble, the work is highly valuable. It will add depth of understanding to those interested in Euripides and Greek tragedy, and the role of mousikê in a variety of genres. It adds a new perspective on debate regarding the nature of the New Music and provides extra dimension to the currently voguish focus on the role of the chorus. Most critically, it relocates the reader through time and space, allowing at least a glimpse of the immersive choral culture for which we are in want.
