The Culture of Kitharôidia by Timothy Power

Abstract

240 BOOK REVIEWS catalogue act as “the captioning of an implied image” – an image formed in the minds of bard and audience.4 Sammons’ study has shown that, even if we as modern readers find Homeric catalogues ugly, we cannot dismiss their importance to Homeric aesthetics. Further studies of their performativity will, I hope, demonstrate that their ugliness and awkwardness are modern misperceptions. WILLIAM BROCKLISS Brigham YoungUniversity, william_brockliss@byu.edu The Culture of Kitharôidia. By Timothy POWER. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. Hellenic Studies Series. Harvard University Press, 2010. Pp. xiv + 638.Paper $18.95. ISBN 978-0-674-02138-9. This important book casts a flood of light on a neglected field of Greek lyric poetry . Neither the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed.) nor Brill’s New Pauly has an entry on kitharody, and Terpander, whose importance in kitharody is like Homer’s in epic, merits only a single paragraph in the OCD, and that a lightly refurbished note by C. M. Bowra from earlier editions. And yet the art of “singing to the kithara” was for centuries one of the most prominent and popular forms of Greek musical entertainment. Indeed, Power’s substantial and wide-ranging study makes kitharody key to understanding a vast body of Greek lyric, all that wassungto strings ratherthanto pipes (auloi). There are, of course, formidable problems of evidence: primary texts are scrappy until the end of the fifth century BCE, and while ancient discussions of the art are abundant (Power notes that we have as much information about kitharody as we do for dramatic or epic performance), they are late and replete with confusion and contradiction. Power copes by adopting an eclectic methodology that includes not only the documentary evidence but also pictures of kitharodes in action onmonuments, pots and wall paintings (thirteenvery legible plates are appended). To reconstruct the genre’s proto-history he uses the methods of structural linguistics (the work stems from a dissertation advised by G. Nagy). Terpander emerges as an “idealized” author (224), retrospectively gener4 David Elmer, “Helen Epigrammatopoios,” Classical Antiquity 24 (2005) 1–39. BOOKREVIEWS 241 ated from the poetry to make it intelligible to classical audiences; the obscure kitharodic “nomes” are compared with Indian râga’s as formats for melodic improvisation (227). This linguistic-anthropological approach to the “Archaic kitharodic performance tradition” (243) is supplemented with techniques of cultural studies, and so this book promises to do for kitharody what Peter Wilson and Eric Csapo have done for aulody. Opening with a “thick description” of a kitharodic performance by Nero signals that Power wants to integrate larger literary processes with specific historical instantiations. Nero serves as a leitmotiv for Part I which brings out the lastingness and popularity of the form while addressing such cultural -studies issues as whether kitharody had a distinctive erotics or gender (arguing on pp. 57–71 that women “probably” could serve as kitharodes in some contexts). A main claim of this part is that kitharody proper, the professional spectacle, only came to Rome late, and indeed that Nero’s fascination with the flamboyant formhad alot to do with encouraging its spread. Readers of Greek lyric will especially focus on Parts II–IV, which trace the art from its foundations through the developed classical forms. Power hypothesizes that both kitharody and rhapsody derived from Dark-Age phorminx-players who could provide both musical accompaniment for melic choruses or monadic presentations of heroic themes. Power’s prototypical performance began with an instrumental introduction (anabolê), followed by a brief prelude (prooimion) sung by the kithara-player and then the main choral song which the performer would accompany as kitharistês. The kernel was the middle piece, which was expanded into long, elaborate competition pieces – kitharody for lyre-singers and “Homeric”hymnsforrhapsodes. This hypothetical scenario comes to life when Power reads passages in archaic poetry as alluding to their tradition. For example, the Chian aoidos who addresses the Delian Maidens’ chorus in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo is interpreted as an Alcman-type kitharist who sings solo prooimia to the maiden chorus he accompanies (202). Within the hymn, the interlude functions as a rhapsodic prooimion acknowledging its “kitharodic” lineage. (An example of...