The Music of Tragedy - by Naomi A Weiss (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The Music of Tragedy offers a new approach to the study of classical Greek theater by examining the use of musical language, imagery, and performance in the late work of Euripides. Naomi Weiss demonstrates that Euripides' allusions to music-making are not just metatheatrical flourishes or gestures towards musical and religious practices external to the drama but closely interwoven with the dramatic plot. Situating Euripides' experimentation with the dramaturgical effects of mousike within a broader cultural context, she shows how much of his novelty lies in his reinvention of traditional lyric styles and motifs for the tragic stage. If we wish to understand better the trajectories of this most important ancient art form, The Music of Tragedy argues, we must pay closer attention to the role played by both music and text.

From the Back Cover

"Naomi Weiss offers a refreshing departure from traditional scholarship on Greek tragedy. Her close consideration of the place of music in Euripides' later tragedies makes this an important and original book."
Armand D'Angour, Professor of Classical Languages and Literature, Oxford University, and author of The Greeks and the New: Novelty in Ancient Greek Imagination and Experience

"This is a valuable work of scholarship that makes an important contribution to the study of Euripides and to broader questions about the development of Greek poetry. It should have a wide readership among the many scholars who are interested in these questions and will significantly advance ongoing discussions about Euripides' distinctive use of the chorus and about the scope and significance of the 'New Music.'"
Sheila Murnaghan, Allen Memorial Professor of Greek, University of Pennsylvania

Review Quotes

"[This] 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."
--Matthew Shipton "The Classical Review"

"An elegiac tone runs through NaomiWeiss' careful, learned, and compelling book, a subtle basso ostinato suggesting that Euripides' late tragedies can never be experienced as vividly or as urgently as they once were. I recommend her book both for its masterful display of scholarly skill and for this moving and provocative sense of loss."-- "Classical Philology"

"As Weiss fills the silence of music lost with a symphony of images and sounds, Greek mousikē emerges as a cognitively demanding and complex synaesthetic practice."-- "Theatre Journal"

"This outstanding book is the first entirely devoted to Euripidean music."-- "Greek and Roman Musical Studies" (4/5/2019 12:00:00 AM)

"Weiss offers us a new way of seeing how choruses are central characters in Euripides' late plays, even when they seem at first glance far removed from what is going on around them. Her work is an excellent example of the current revolution in the study of ancient music, which is refuting definitively the facile assumption that tragedy's music in unknowable and therefore uninteresting."-- "Bryn Mawr Classical Review"

About the Author

Naomi A. Weiss is Assistant Professor of Classics at Harvard University. She has published widely on ancient Greek poetry and performance culture, especially tragedy.