Naomi A. Weiss 
The Music of Tragedy 
Performance and Imagination in Euripidean Theater

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
mousik
e 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.

Table of Content

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Note on Editions and Translations

Introduction: In Search of Tragedy’s Music


1. Words, Music, and Dance in Archaic Lyric and Classical Tragedy

Before Tragedy: Imaginative Suggestion in Archaic Choral Lyric

Metamusical Play in Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Early Euripides

2. Chorus, Character, and Plot in Electra

Electra and the Chorus

Performed Ecphrasis

Choral Anticipation and Enactment

3. Musical Absence in Trojan Women

The Paradox of Absent Choreia

New Songs and Past Performances

Performing the Fall of Troy

4. Protean Singers and the Shaping of Narrative in Helen

Birdsong and Lament

New Music

Travel and Epiphany

5. From Choreia to Monody in Iphigenia in Aulis

Spectatorship, Enactment, and Desire

Past and Present Mousike

Choreia and Monody


Conclusion: Euripides’ Musical Innovations

Works Cited

General Index

Index Locorum

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.