Homer and the South-Slavic Epic Singers

Abstract

Many authors consider that the development of music and musical instruments in the Aegean region was discontinued after the fall of Mycenaean civilization. However, the more detailed analyses of the archaeological findings, particularly of those originating from the so called Dark Age of the Aegean and of the Mediterranean, as well as of the Mycenaean music, compared with the evidence met in Homer’s epics, indicate a transitional phase in the musical developments up to the archaic period. The reduction of lyre strings to four does not mean to use only four musical tones. The phorminx players, presented on the paintings from that period, are most usually encircled by dancers, in the same way as Demodocus in Homer’s Odyssey sings about the love of Ares and Aphrodite surrounded by young boys who dance around him. Thus the presentation of aoidoi who sang heroic songs in the royal palaces gets a new dimension, as well as the musical possibilities of their phorminx. The attempts to reconstruct the singing of Homer’s times are directed mainly by the evidence on rhapsodes from the classical period and by the comparison with the performances of Balkan epic singers of the 19th and 20th centuries. The singing is reduced to a monotonous melody of four tones which is performed in unison with the four tones of the phorminx, excluding any possibility to use more tones and ignoring the rhythm of epic poetry – dactylic hexameter. The recent studies of the rhythm of the contemporary dance – syrtos confirmed that it has the equal scheme of dactylic hexameter which throws new light on this problem.