Choral Ode Research Articles

The Argument of "Septem Contra Thebas"

ON FIRST ACQUAINTANCE, the Septem is a thoroughly unsatisfying play. Not on account of its immediate texture-its diction and the form of individual scenes: it is full of fine speeches and dramatic exchanges, and contains a splendid symbolic construction in the shield scene. But instead of an overall movement of the drama, with each successive element building upon the last, the play in the first half at least seems to fall apart into a series of episodes: the initial statement of the Argive attack and Eteocles' preparations to meet it, the hysterical inrush of the chorus of Theban women, leading to their argument with Eteocles, and the shield scene. The shield scene itself creates a powerful momentum towards the climax of Eteocles' decision to meet his brother in battle. Dramatic continuity is maintained in the succeeding choral ode, which places that decision in the context of its history, broadening out the perspective in which the climax is seen. That choral ode, however, seems to anticipate a climax of action, to follow the climax of decision: the actual battle which decides the fate of the city. But when the next scene opens, the action is all over. There is nothing more but the final lament.1 The most intractable element here is the scene of Eteocles and the panicstricken chorus of women. There is no obvious motivation for it in the opening section which precedes it, nor in the shield scene which follows. The shield scene by itself could be seen to follow thematically from the opening section-continuing to elaborate Eteocles' manner of meeting the Argive attack. But this isolates the chorus' scene still further, and makes it appear all the more dispensable.2

III. Form and Mode (1): Action, Episode, Theatre

The supposedly ‘classical’ sequence: prologue (or prologue-scene) –parodos (entry-song of the chorus) – five episodes, each followed by a choral ode (stasimon) – exodos (exit-scene): is found in only four plays, Alc, Med., HF, Bacc. – and only in Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus of Sophocles, nowhere in Aeschylus. In most plays the fifth episode doubles as the exodos; in Tro. and IT the fourth does (as in all Aeschylus’ tragedies except Agamemnon). Such external shaping may suggest that Euripides deliberately has fewer main movements than practice, if not tradition, allowed. That is only crudely true. Rather, he both lengthens his episodes, and tends to multiply their internal scenes (best defined by entrances and exits); some scenes are almost independent, so that ‘episode’ nears ‘act’ in our sense, and more than one significant development occurs within it. A good example is the very long second episode of Or. (356-806, five scenes): Menelaus, Orestes, Tyndareus, and Pylades successively enter, Tyndareus and Menelaus go out in its course; Orestes moves through hope of help from Menelaus, bitter attack from Tyndareus, rejection from Menelaus to a fresh resolution of defiance together with Pylades.

Agamemnon's Decision: Freedom and Folly in Aeschylus

In 1956 Lloyd-Jones published an article challenging the dominant view of Aeschylus as a religious thinker, and in 1962 followed this up with a second dealing with the problems presented by Agamemnon's decision, in the first choral ode of the Agamemnon, to kill his daughter. A number of other scholars, especially in England, have entered the debate. My reason for further contributing to it is that I feel a more acceptable overall understanding of Aeschylus' intention can be obtained by combining the insights of several scholars, by relaxing somewhat the demands of strict logic, by comparing the poet's practice in other plays, and by analyzing more closely than has yet been done the vital stanzas of the first ode in which the decision is made. My views are in many respects similar to those which have been expressed by Lloyd-Jones and Lesky, but with modifications which I think are of some importance.1 The questions about Agamemnon's decision are obvious enough. Can we think that he has a free choice of alternatives ? If so, is it a choice between alternatives both of which are disastrous? Or has he no free

‘Imagery of the Elsewhere” Two Choral Odes of Euripides

In this paper I approach the relationship between one kind of choral ode and its play, through an analysis of two stasima and less detailed reference to their respective plays. The two odes, Hipp. 732–75 and Hel. 1451–1511, share the theme which has provoked comment on Euripides' use of ‘escapism’ to counteract the supposed reality of his tragedies. I prefer to see the escape-form as a reassertion of the themes and problems of the play in a different and distant context, and to suggest that even in the ‘elsewhere’ of lyric song the dark features of life that mark the drama are not to be escaped. The winged boat in the Hippolytus, for instance, is parallel in the ode to the winged bird, symbol and vehicle of escape, but it is also the ship whose journey initiates the disaster of the play.

Euripides HippolΥtus 1120–1150

The difficulty in the apostrophe of the (1144–5) has been noticed by commentators. So Barrett (ad loc.): ‘/ this cannot mean that the Amazon from Hipp, now that he is exiled: in all the forms of her legend … she meets a violent death at a time which cannot be long after Hipp.'s birth, and it is inconceivable that Eur. should mean his audience to think of her as still alive in Trozen or Athens.’What seems to have passed unnoticed is that there are, in this choral ode (the triad 1120–50), two other passages which also suffer from at least prima facie incongruities with details of the story well known to the audience:

Sophocles' Praise of Man in the Antigone

The first stasimon of the Antigone is widely and justly acknowledged to be one of the finest of Sophocles' extant lyrical compositions. The praises of the achievements of man are set forth in language whose sheer power of diction and imagery imparts to the ode a tone of sincerity and conviction which is perhaps rivalled only by the praise of Athene in the first stasimon of Oedipus Coloneus. Just as that ode shows that Sophocles felt a real and abiding love for his native city, so too from this ode in Antigone we can see that he was deeply and genuinely impressed with the picture of the cultural progress of man as expounded by Protagoras. The power and the achievements of man made a great impact upon him, which is reflected in this ode. But just as the praise of Athens is not to be regarded in this light alone, as an independent song (for it has an intimate connection with the drama arising from its immediate response to the situation and from its wider implications for the action of the play as a whole), so also here, the praise of man in Antigone must not be treated as independent of the action of the play. For the choral ode stands, in the first place at least, as a response to the situation by a character involved in that situation, and as such it has an important contributory part to play in the total effect of the drama.

Thought-Sequence in the Ode

A NCIENT lyric poetry falls into two main types: the Doric choir-song, and the Asiatic monody. Sir Maurice Bowra describes these types as fundamentally different in form, origin, style, and character, despite some interaction.' The choral ode, he says, was formal and artificial, designed to go with music and dance, concerned with a definite occasion, abounding in maxims and old tales, generally religious in its associations. Such was the work of Pindar and Bacchylides.2 The monody purported to be the utterance of one person, a recitation, concerned with individual feelings, derived from folk-songs of love and pleasure, informal in design.3 Many aspects of contrast between the choir-song and the monody could be discussed: e.g., structure (triads, as against stanzas or continuous lines), metre (correspondence in strophes and variations from triad to triad, as against stanzaic or single-line pattern), occasion (public, as against personal), tone (high style, as against informal), and so forth. This paper is concerned only with the pattern of thought, the arrangement of ideas in an ode. An attempt will be made to distinguish the formal ode from the personal song in terms of the sequence of ideas. The basic contrast will be between an architectural4 exposition of ideas-i.e., arrangement of thought in blocks corresponding to strophes and triads-and a linear or exposition-i.e., a development of thought through easy and natural links of association. Such a distinction is, in practice, largely theoretical. In early lyric the interaction to which Sir Maurice Bowra refers is already discernible. Pindar has experimented with modifications of strict thought-pattern. The monodists show signs of influence by formal styles. In Horace is to be found an apparently deliberate, and certainly a felicitous, compromise between formal structure and cursive thought-design. The distinctive charm of Horace is in large measure to be attributed to his skilful reconciliation of the two styles. The formal triadic Ode could be defined as units antithetically arranged-strophe and antistrophe-together with other membersepodes-which bind and reconcile the antithetical units.& Such is the a a' x, b b' y, c c' z scheme, where x y z are syntheses of a a', b b', c c'

Dryden's Odes and Draghi's Music

The study of any choral lyric, properly so called, and designed to be sung and otherwise performed by a group of executants on a specific public occasion, must be considerably hampered when its original musical setting is not at hand. Indeed the appreciation of such a poem as Alexander's Feast can be only partial at best if the text is read with the comparatively simple apparatus that one usually brings to bear upon a sonnet by Sidney. When the music to a choral ode was no afterthought but rather an integral part of the whole performance, the divorcement of the words from their setting results in an inevitable loss of understanding and of proper response. The ideal way to absorb any choral lyric, whether it be by Pindar, the author of the Book of Judges, or Dryden, would be to hear, if not to participate in, the complex display of sound through which its author intended it to be proclaimed. And since one cannot be present at the original performance of any save contemporary compositions of the kind, it becomes imperative to reconstruct, through the vigorous use of both study and imagination, the original circumstances and the original music which accompanied the poem.

The ‘Mountain-Mother’ Ode in the Helena of Euripides

Paley, in his note on Eur. Hel. 1301, says, ‘The choral ode which here follows, though beautiful in itself, is liable to the charge of being unconnected with the subject of the play.’ He adds that the ode ‘is both difficult and corrupt.’ And as far as I am aware, no one has yet succeeded in explaining away the difficulties, or restoring the more corrupt sentences.