Two issues confront each of the authors in this collection of provocative papers about the performance of music in antiquity: the fragmentary nature of most evidence and our virtually complete inability to reproduce the sounds of music from antiquity. These problems are by no means unique to the topics addressed in this volume, as all students of antiquity and of music that predates the era of sound recording know. Several authors acknowledge these issues (M.V. Tonietti, p. 9; T.W. Burgh, p. 121; and R. Jiménez Pasalodos and P. Holmes, p. 171), but they still stand as a challenge to much of the research presented here, to which the authors offer a variety of responses with mixed success.
Several authors present well-balanced interpretations of varied bodies of evidence that support thoughtful conclusions. Tonietti surveys payment records in the Ebla Archives from the third millennium bc to adumbrate a prosopography of the palace musicians and draw a detailed picture of musical practices. She focuses on the hard evidence from the tablets to discuss the categories of musicians, the place of female musicians at the court, the repertories practised at Ebla, and the status and function of instrumentalists (chiefly flautists). Perhaps the most interesting information to emerge from these payment records concerns the relatively remote geographic origins of many of the musicians, which suggests that the court devoted significant resources to the recruitment of foreign personnel.
Jiménez Pasalodos and Holmes draw on a wide range of iconographic evidence from Iberia from the second half of the first millennium to discuss the social function of music and the status of certain female musicians. The authors link music with ritual combat or dancing as well as domestic and cultic scenes. They investigate the role of gender in musical practices, observing that the iconography usually depicts men playing the trumpet and women the aulos. Women also appear in many of the cultic contexts, and the authors note that the representations often indicate, primarily through dress, that the women are of high socio-economic status. From these circumstances, Pasalodos and Holmes deduce that these auletes probably fulfilled the role of priestesses.
K. Wysłucha presents a detailed linguistic interpretation of Latin texts that describe the ‘many-holed’ tibia and discuss its function. She reaches back to the Republic of Plato and a text from the Anthologia Palatina usually attributed to Antipater to illustrate the use and potential ethical entanglements of the so-called polymodal tibia. She then provides a sensitive reading of passages from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, Seneca's Agamemnon and the Metamorphoses and Florida of Apuleius. Each of these authors (Ovid by its absence) invokes the instrument within his narrative context to suggest a sonic atmosphere that evokes a mythic or cultic environment. The polymodal tibia emerges as a powerful symbol for the sound one would hear and associate with these events and rituals.
Other contributions do not succeed to the same degree as these just named, not so much because the interpretations they offer are unconvincing as because they are possible but hardly necessary. For example, D. Shehata deduces, from certain postures that figures in visual representations adopt, that we are to understand that those figures are singing. Specifically, the arms are crossed in front of the torso, or one hand holds the other. The iconographic evidence she adduces is provocative but far from conclusive. The presence of figures represented in this posture alongside instrumentalists certainly permits us to suggest that the instrumentalist could be accompanying a singer, but without corroborating evidence, the question must remain open.
Similarly, Burgh examines some passages from the Old Testament to support his conclusion that wind players in ancient Israel used circular breathing. He bases this deduction on the Hebrew word tameed, which he translates as ‘continually, without interruption’ (pp. 123–5). As Burgh describes, wind players store air in their mouth and cheeks to generate sound while they replenish the supply through their nose. Considered a virtuosic technique in the modern West, circular breathing is attested in other cultures and certainly generates a continuous sound. But since the passages Burgh cites all refer to trumpets in the plural, it is also possible that the players generated continuous sound not by circular breathing but by staggered breathing; i.e. some trumpeters continued to play while others breathed. This practice is far simpler and less demanding on the players. Again Burgh's conclusion is possible but not necessary.
A. Bellia cites a combination of architectural, archaeological and iconographic evidence from western Greek culture to propose that singing and dancing played important roles in ritual. She shows that surviving architectural remains of theatres in Syracuse stand close to cult sites and that archaeological finds from the theatre at Selinunte (fragments of an aulos and shards with depictions of dancers) might associate music and dancing with cultic activities there. None of this, however, forces us to conclude that singing and dancing took place at these sites and that they were directly related to the rituals associated with the cult. Her conclusion is certainly possible but the accumulated evidence falls far short of being definitive.
One aspect of the argumentation of many of the essays demands attention and that is that poets, painters and sculptors are entirely capable of pure invention. When a poet like Seneca or any of the visual artists discussed in this volume describe or depict a musical event or scene, they might be reporting the reality of musical practice that they actually witnessed or even helped to create, or they might be fashioning something entirely fictional. Simply put, it is the job of artists to make things up. So, when Apuleius describes the tibia Marsyas played in his ill-fated competition with Apollo (Wysłucha, pp. 241–3) or a wall-painting from Pompeii depicts a scene of domestic music-making (Mungari, pp. 221–3), we have no guarantees that these presentations, the instruments they portray or the scenes they represent accord with actual contemporary musical practices.
I conclude with a fascinating experiment in living musical practice by H. Köpp-Junk. After surveying archaeological and iconographic evidence for musical practice in ancient Egypt, she describes her attempts to reconstruct some of the music from that era. We do not know how this music sounded, but the attitude Köpp-Junk adopts in undertaking this experiment reminds me very much of that evinced by Benjamin Bagby of the medieval ensemble Sequentia in the performances he has essayed of sections of Beowulf. Music is a living art, and all performances are interpretations. Both Köpp-Junk and Bagby are bravely attempting to recapture at least some of the spirit of this music that has lain silent for centuries. Do these performances sound like those we would have heard in ancient Egypt or Anglo-Saxon England? No one knows, but by entering into an interpretative dialogue with this music, Köpp-Junk and Bagby have immeasurably enriched our own experience with it.
The essays present a good deal of material that illuminates music and its cultivation throughout the ancient world, some with more success than others. But the nature of the evidence frequently prohibits definitive conclusions about the music and its practice, as in many research endeavours about antiquity. Judicious evaluation of the testimony must often lead to hypotheses that are unproven and sometimes unprovable. Still, we must move forward, as the authors of these essays have done, and subject this evidence to the most strenuous examination so that we can recover as much as we can of these musical riches.
