Photography & heritage: research papers by Theodor E Ulieriu-Rostás
Studii și cercetări de istoria artei. Artă plastică, 2023
This paper presents the first results of an ongoing survey of photographers and photographic stud... more This paper presents the first results of an ongoing survey of photographers and photographic studios in 19th and early 20th-century archival records created by the municipality of Bucharest, Romania. Following the gradual development of urban regulations in the 1830s and 1840s, any construction work carried out within the boundaries of the city was subjected to a formal building permission handled by the municipal architect, and later by the Technical Department of the municipality. This pertained as well to the construction of studios or the alteration of pre-existing structures in view of accommodating a photographic studio. The archival fonds thus generated provide us with a largely untapped primary source for the history of photography in Bucharest. The archival records discussed in this paper concern two of Bucharest's foremost photographers in the 19th century, Carol Szathmári and Franz Duschek. Corroborated with cartographic material and press sources, the retrieved building permissions bring significant clarification to the chronology and the changing urban contexts of their photographic practice, while the accompanying architectural projects shed new light on the spatial organization of their residences and studios. The arguments advanced in this paper notably lead to the identification of Duschek's surviving studio house on strada Nouă (today str. Edgar Quinet), and to the localization of several exterior shots in the immediate vicinity of Duschek's provisional studio in No. 21 Calea Mogoșoaiei.
Photography & heritage: presentations & talks by Theodor E Ulieriu-Rostás
Paper presented in the workshop "Photo Albums’ Twisted Meanings: Between nostalgia and trauma" (P... more Paper presented in the workshop "Photo Albums’ Twisted Meanings: Between nostalgia and trauma" (Prague, 25-26 November 2021), organised by the CVF - Photography Research Centre of the Institute of Art History (Czech Academy of Sciences) in collaboration with DOX - Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague.
Abstract:
From the end of the 19th century down to the 1980s, the city of Bucharest has witnessed urban change on such a massive scale, as to make the mid-19th century urban landscape virtually unrecognizable to the current inhabitant of the city. Although the demolition of local lieux de mémoire was already eliciting protests in the 1880s, it was only after the turn of the century that a structured discourse on the pre-modern city acquired its distinctive blend of antiquarian inquiry and personal reminiscing, conservationist exhortations and undisguised nostalgia. Works such as Henri Stahl’s Fading Bucharest (Bucureștii ce se duc, 1910) encompassed photography as an integral part of this memorial practice, noting the irrecoverable lacunas in the 19th-century visual record of the city.
From the 1850s onwards, early photographic views of Bucharest have been compiled in albums and portfolios meant to showcase Wallachia or Romania at large, alongside ethnic ‘types’, monastic ensembles in the countryside and natural landscapes. While this early photographic output holds implicit documentary value, its relation to Bucharest specifically as a locus of memory, connoisseurship or impending change has remained elusive in the absence of programmatic texts. How is relevance constructed within the confined space of the photographic album? Where does the quest for the picturesque meet the desire to preserve the particularities of an unstable urban landscape through photography? Do such assemblages of urban views anticipate nostalgia from an inhabitant’s viewpoint, rather than unfolding the city for an outsider’s gaze? This contribution attempts to set these tentative questions on firm ground by taking a closer look at several Romanian albums ranging from the 1850s to the early 1900s, some of which have never been presented before in a scholarly setting.
"The Romanian Peasant Museum Archive presents itself: on gardens and communities in Bucharest"
G... more "The Romanian Peasant Museum Archive presents itself: on gardens and communities in Bucharest"
Guest talk (in collaboration with Iris Șerban) hosted by the BRD Scena9 Residence in Bucharest (18 September 2021).
"Vicinities seen from afar: a (digital) look at a panoramic photograph of Bucharest at the end of... more "Vicinities seen from afar: a (digital) look at a panoramic photograph of Bucharest at the end of the 1870s"
Guest talk in the architecture seminar directed by Prof. Florian Stanciu at the „Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism (25 March 2021).
Classical antiquity: research papers by Theodor E Ulieriu-Rostás
Bravi, Lomiento, Meriani & Pace (eds), Tra lyra e aulos: Tradizioni musicali e generi poetici, pp. 327-354.
This paper puts forward a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the iconography of chelys-lyre... more This paper puts forward a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the iconography of chelys-lyres and barbitoi associated with satyrs and Dionysos in late 5th and early 4th century Attic vase-painting, in an attempt to confront independent visual evidence with the textually-driven narratives on musical hierarchies and polemics in Classical Athens. The author identifies a coherent lineage of vase-painters which introduce the lyre in the semantics of Dionysiac iconography in the late 5th and early 4th century BC, escaping the musical polarizations associated with the critics of New Music – thus illuminating a largely invisible segment within the Athenian society in a time of political and socio-cultural turmoil.
Since classical studies started absorbing and adapting the concept of alterity in the 1980s, Gree... more Since classical studies started absorbing and adapting the concept of alterity in the 1980s, Greek interaction with foreign cultures and the use of ethnicity as a means of self-definition and socio-cultural differentiation have been investigated within an increasingly larger scope of domains and discursive contexts. 1 Despite the fact that some of these contexts were inherently related to the field of mousikē, no concerted attempt has yet been made to examine the construction of cultural identities through music in the Greco-Roman tradition. 2 Furthermore, iconography represents the less explored corpus of evidence pertaining to such musical identities, perhaps because of the methodological problems raised by its mediated reading.
OLIVIU FELECAN (ed.), Name and naming. Proceedings of the International Conference on Onomastics, 1st Edition: Multiethnic Connections in Anthroponymy. Cluj: Editura Mega, 2011: 633-640., 2011
In the Greek textual corpus of the archaic and classical periods, satyrs are collective and anony... more In the Greek textual corpus of the archaic and classical periods, satyrs are collective and anonymous characters par excellence. However, their anonymity makes way, on Attic painted pottery, for varied functional onomastics lacking any textual parallels whatsoever, and realised on the level of the inscriptions that accompany the figurative representations of satyrs. Fluctuating between comical allusions, cultic references and quasi-personifications, these satyr names had been inventoried at the beginning of the 20th century, but they have not been systematically studied in relation to the figures they accompany or within the wider context of the scenes and objects on which they appear. Starting from the case study of a red-figure krater attributed to the Kadmos Painter (Ruvo, Museo Jatta 1093), this paper aims to outline a tentative model of the relationship between the figurative representations of satyrs and the associated functional names. Built around a distinction between five levels of semantic detachment of these inscriptions in relation to images, this exercise in formalisation could lay the foundations of a pertinent method of analysing the iconography of satyrs.
Classical antiquity: talks & presentations by Theodor E Ulieriu-Rostás
In the wake of the gradual rediscovery and historical conceptualization of the so-called ‘New Mus... more In the wake of the gradual rediscovery and historical conceptualization of the so-called ‘New Music’ phenomenon of the later 5th and early 4th centuries BC, it was only a matter of time before Attic iconography would come under scrutiny in the attempt to identify some sort of contemporary visual record which could at least corroborate or reflect what is known from textual sources; all the more so, since many of the latter are either fragmentary, ideologically one-sided or chronologically posterior to the heydays of musical innovation. In a way, the suggestion had been lying on the classicists’ threshold ever since Aristotle’s short account of musical change in Athens, rather atypically supported by visual evidence (Politics VIII. 6,12). Several recent studies did tackle this problem while investigating more restricted visual corpora, e.g. choregic dedications (Eric Csapo), possible reflections of the New Dithyramb (Alexander Heinemann) or late 5th c. kitharoidia (Timothy Power) in Attic vase-painting; conclusions, ranging from nuanced to pessimistic, run against the enthusiasm of some earlier assessments and do not warrant any simple parallels between the textually-driven bestiary of New Music and surviving Attic iconography.
Could it be that the socioeconomic mechanics at work behind the production of Attic painted pottery prevented a clearer reflection of these (presumably) divisive changes in the musical life of the Athenian polis, or should we look for subtler differences? Are absences and discontinuities in traditional imagery just as indicative of these undergoing cultural changes? This paper will attempt to formulate a partial answer by (1) taking a fresh look at the limited and less frequently discussed corpus of later 5th c. BC agonistic imagery, which seems to come to an abrupt end at the very height of the musical ‘revolution’, while also (2) bringing into discussion later series of ‘mythological’ images which document the survival and further development of agonistic references within the visual repertoire of 4th century Attic vase-painters. In turn, this analysis should contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the social visibility of New Music outside the milieu of professional musicians, sophists and knowledgeable aristocrats who came to preserve and filter, polemics left aside, the memory of this musical ‘revolution’.
From the frenzied witnesses of musical inventions in Athenian satyr plays to the Hesiodic “good-f... more From the frenzied witnesses of musical inventions in Athenian satyr plays to the Hesiodic “good-for-nothings” and Telestes’ treatment of Marsyas as a “handclapping beast”, satyrs seem to cover a rather narrow spectre of musical competence in the archaic and classical Hellenic poetic tradition. Yet Attic vase-painting makes out of satyrs one of its most frequent and enduring musical actors, clearly surpassing in numbers the occurrences of any other hybrid figures or animal musicians. Previous literature has explored the satyrs’ broad connection to music and the animal world, but the aim of these particular images remains little understood: are they mere visual puns, do they outline lineal or inverted paradigms of musical performance? Putting this question on firmer methodological ground, this paper will take a systematic approach to the relations, correspondences and construction of meaning around satyr musicians, as framed within the overall visual syntax and three-dimensionality of Attic painted vases.
De la competițiile muzicale și symposia regale ce jalonează traseul campaniilor lui Alexandru și ... more De la competițiile muzicale și symposia regale ce jalonează traseul campaniilor lui Alexandru și până la seria mai mult sau mai puțin apocrifelor anecdote legate de paideia viitorului rege, tradiția literară antică structurată în jurul figurii lui Alexandru Macedon constituie un corpus documentar semnificativ pentru studiul practicilor și instituțiilor muzicale grecești, cu toate valențele lor politice și socio-culturale. Ca prim pas într-un proiect de cercetare mai larg, prezentarea de față își propune să schițeze o panoramă a acestui corpus puțin frecventat sub specie musicae, urmând două directii complementare de lectură: (i) semnificația momentului Alexandru Macedon în contextul lungului proces de profesionalizare și difuziune a culturii agonistice/teatrale de masă; (ii) posteritatea și valoarea paradigmatică a imaginii lui Alexandru ca mousikos anēr în tradiția literară elenistică și imperială.
Since the mid-19th century, scholarly approaches to the changing classical Athenian culture of mo... more Since the mid-19th century, scholarly approaches to the changing classical Athenian culture of mousikē have been persistently shaped by the polarizing and polemic discourse on musical instruments and their impact on the polis – a theme codified in the musical imperatives of Plato’s Republic, but often projected on earlier poetic material, such as the aetiologies of the aulos woven around the figure of Marsyas. Such notions as the Nietzschean atemporal opposition between the Apollonian lyre and the Dionysian aulos, or the one-sided reading of the latter’s purported inferiority as the expression of an all-encompassing Athenian identity have been superseded by recent work on the socio-cultural background of New Music: the hostility towards auletic innovation and its underlying musical hierarchies seem to be intimately linked to certain conservative, perhaps aristocratic groups within the Athenian society.
What about the rest, then? The meagre textual corpus of later 5th and early 4th century melic poetry gives us limited knowledge of the discourse of New Music, let alone the entire array of Athenian perceptions on mousikē. Attic red-figure pottery, on the other hand, provides a substantial iconographic corpus designed to fit the tastes and needs of a much larger segment of Athenian and non-Athenian customers, while also allowing for a fine-grained analysis of atypical images in relation to specific workshops and destinations. Coming as a natural continuation of a paper delivered at the 5th MOISA conference (Salerno, 2012) and focused on late 6th and early 5th century images of satyr-citharodes, this presentation will re-examine the logical knot of the purported aulos-chordophones opposition in late 5th and early 4th century Attic vase-painting through a qualitative (i.e. semiotic) and quantitative analysis of the depictions of lyres and kitharai in Dionysiac contexts. Special attention will be paid to the dynamics of the Attic iconographic tradition in relation to changing performance practices, as well as to a contextualised reading of the atypical images of Marsyas playing chordophones within the output of the Kadmos and Pothos Painters.
Cel puțin din secolul al V-lea a.Chr. și până la finele Antichității, tradiția muzicală greacă și... more Cel puțin din secolul al V-lea a.Chr. și până la finele Antichității, tradiția muzicală greacă și-a construit și reconfigurat în chip consecvent memoria începuturilor în jurul unor figuri fondatoare, dintre care canonul mitologic post-clasic le-a reținut mai cu seamă pe cele ale lui Orfeu și Marsyas. Dacă această posteritate europeană s-a dovedit puțin receptivă la afinitățile între cei doi muzicieni mitici, o serie de texte antice relevă un neglijat punct comun în ”biografiile” acestora: o moarte violentă care lasă în urmă corpuri-relicvă cu valențe sonore, rămășițe ce pot călători, diseminând puterile muzicianului și devenind per se obiecte fondatoare. Comunicarea de față își propune să investigheze etiologiile muzicale, topografice și rituale întrețesute în jurul a două astfel de relicve călătoare - capul lui Orfeu și pielea lui Marsyas -, punând astfel în evidență o latură puțin studiată a imaginarului corpului în Antichitatea greco-romană.
În ultimii douăzeci de ani, cercetarea interdisciplinară a practicilor muzicale în Antichitate a ... more În ultimii douăzeci de ani, cercetarea interdisciplinară a practicilor muzicale în Antichitate a cunoscut o expansiune fără precedent în spaţiul universitar european şi extra-european – o dezvoltare verificabilă atât în plan instituţional şi într-o bibliografie crescândă, cât şi la nivelul travaliului metodologic de definire a acestui domeniu de cercetare situat la intersecţia arheologiei clasice cu (etno)muzicologia, cu filologia şi cu istoria socio-culturală în sens larg.
Pornind de la o serie de exemple preluate din arealul culturii greco-romane, comunicarea de faţă îşi propune să aducă în atenţia publicului de specialitate atât rolul fundamental jucat de artefactul muzical şi contextul arheologic în cercetarea arheomuzicologică, cât şi relevanţa acesteia din urmă pentru arheologie. În ton cu dimensiunea performativă intrinsecă artefactelor muzicale, prezentarea va atinge problema demersurilor reconstrucţioniste ca metodă ştiinţifică, precum şi ca formă de patrimonialiare şi valorizare a cercetării arheologice în spaţiul public.
Jusqu`au milieu des années 80, la nouvelle anthropologie historique développée par les disciples ... more Jusqu`au milieu des années 80, la nouvelle anthropologie historique développée par les disciples de Louis Gernet à la rencontre du structuralisme avait largement contourné le domaine de la mousikē. Ce n`est que dans un petit livre situé à la confluence de l`écriture historique avec l`essai, La mort dans les yeux (1985), que Jean-Pierre Vernant avait abordé la question des valeurs symboliques de l`aulos dans l`imaginaire grec, au sein d`une enquête sur l`altérité effroyable de la Gorgone. Vingt cinq ans après, l`étude de la mousikē se trouve dans une période d`expansion - à la fois institutionnelle, bibliographique et méthodologique - qui privilégie plutôt le diachronique et l`idéologique, sans toutefois questionner les racines de notre compréhension de la musique dans les mythes grecs: l`héritage nietzschéen ou frazérien, la psychanalyse, le structuralisme etc. Cette présentation se propose d`ouvrir cette discussion méthodologique autour du texte de J.-P. Vernant, en guise de préface pour une nouvelle recherche sur les mythes de l`aulos.
The founding myths of auletic music are depicted on more than thirty Italiote and Etruscan painte... more The founding myths of auletic music are depicted on more than thirty Italiote and Etruscan painted vases ranging from the late 5th to the late 4th century BC, among which the Apollo-Marsyas competition enjoyed an enduring popularity: a substantial output which largely matches in numbers the related corpus of surviving Athenian vases. Far from being only local copies of the latter, Italiote depictions of Marsyas point to an active process of reception and reworking of the Athenian iconographic repertoire (if not of the narrative itself) in local contexts. However, the particularities of these images were seldom studied together, in correlation with our limited knowledge of Italiote theatre and musical culture. Taking the Italiote iconography of Marsyas as its starting point, this paper will attempt (1) to approach the reception of New Music and the related Athenian polemics in Magna Graecia through dramatic performances, but also (2) to reevaluate the impact of the Italiote cultural milieu on the development of a Panhellenic iconography and narrative of Marsyas` contest. This last point will notably propose an Italic (and comic) origin for Marsyas` puzzling final trial against Apollo`s instrument held upside down, as attested in Imperial mythography.
"In the Greco-Roman literary tradition, the aulos is typically associated with the barbarian Near... more "In the Greco-Roman literary tradition, the aulos is typically associated with the barbarian Near East and, above all, with Asia Minor: a connection which transcends the boundaries of literary genres to become a commonplace asserted through different discursive strategies in tragedy and melic poetry, in philosophical and technical texts. While an import of the aulos from Asia Minor to Greece during the early Iron Age cannot be ruled out for certain, by the fifth century BC the aulos had nevertheless become an entirely autochthonous instrument, deeply embedded in the Greek songculture. Recent scholarship shows this purported foreignness and easterness of the aulos to be a construction, if not invented, at all events radicalised amidst the fifth century BC Athenian polemics around the New Music, whose iconic instrument was the aulos.
This paper will examine a series of contexts in which the aulos is represented on Attic Red-figure vases, in the attempt to draw a comparison between the easternising and alienating discourse on the aulos found in texts and Attic iconographical tradition. Can we identify a visual equivalent to the easternising discourse in literary sources? What semiotic functions does the aulos play in the economy of the image? Does it need a visual complement in order to allude to an Eastern context? In the attempt to answer these questions, this paper aims to explore new methodological perspectives in the iconographical investigation of cultural exchange between the East and the West in Classical Antiquity."
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Photography & heritage: research papers by Theodor E Ulieriu-Rostás
Photography & heritage: presentations & talks by Theodor E Ulieriu-Rostás
Abstract:
From the end of the 19th century down to the 1980s, the city of Bucharest has witnessed urban change on such a massive scale, as to make the mid-19th century urban landscape virtually unrecognizable to the current inhabitant of the city. Although the demolition of local lieux de mémoire was already eliciting protests in the 1880s, it was only after the turn of the century that a structured discourse on the pre-modern city acquired its distinctive blend of antiquarian inquiry and personal reminiscing, conservationist exhortations and undisguised nostalgia. Works such as Henri Stahl’s Fading Bucharest (Bucureștii ce se duc, 1910) encompassed photography as an integral part of this memorial practice, noting the irrecoverable lacunas in the 19th-century visual record of the city.
From the 1850s onwards, early photographic views of Bucharest have been compiled in albums and portfolios meant to showcase Wallachia or Romania at large, alongside ethnic ‘types’, monastic ensembles in the countryside and natural landscapes. While this early photographic output holds implicit documentary value, its relation to Bucharest specifically as a locus of memory, connoisseurship or impending change has remained elusive in the absence of programmatic texts. How is relevance constructed within the confined space of the photographic album? Where does the quest for the picturesque meet the desire to preserve the particularities of an unstable urban landscape through photography? Do such assemblages of urban views anticipate nostalgia from an inhabitant’s viewpoint, rather than unfolding the city for an outsider’s gaze? This contribution attempts to set these tentative questions on firm ground by taking a closer look at several Romanian albums ranging from the 1850s to the early 1900s, some of which have never been presented before in a scholarly setting.
Guest talk (in collaboration with Iris Șerban) hosted by the BRD Scena9 Residence in Bucharest (18 September 2021).
Guest talk in the architecture seminar directed by Prof. Florian Stanciu at the „Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism (25 March 2021).
Classical antiquity: research papers by Theodor E Ulieriu-Rostás
Classical antiquity: talks & presentations by Theodor E Ulieriu-Rostás
Could it be that the socioeconomic mechanics at work behind the production of Attic painted pottery prevented a clearer reflection of these (presumably) divisive changes in the musical life of the Athenian polis, or should we look for subtler differences? Are absences and discontinuities in traditional imagery just as indicative of these undergoing cultural changes? This paper will attempt to formulate a partial answer by (1) taking a fresh look at the limited and less frequently discussed corpus of later 5th c. BC agonistic imagery, which seems to come to an abrupt end at the very height of the musical ‘revolution’, while also (2) bringing into discussion later series of ‘mythological’ images which document the survival and further development of agonistic references within the visual repertoire of 4th century Attic vase-painters. In turn, this analysis should contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the social visibility of New Music outside the milieu of professional musicians, sophists and knowledgeable aristocrats who came to preserve and filter, polemics left aside, the memory of this musical ‘revolution’.
What about the rest, then? The meagre textual corpus of later 5th and early 4th century melic poetry gives us limited knowledge of the discourse of New Music, let alone the entire array of Athenian perceptions on mousikē. Attic red-figure pottery, on the other hand, provides a substantial iconographic corpus designed to fit the tastes and needs of a much larger segment of Athenian and non-Athenian customers, while also allowing for a fine-grained analysis of atypical images in relation to specific workshops and destinations. Coming as a natural continuation of a paper delivered at the 5th MOISA conference (Salerno, 2012) and focused on late 6th and early 5th century images of satyr-citharodes, this presentation will re-examine the logical knot of the purported aulos-chordophones opposition in late 5th and early 4th century Attic vase-painting through a qualitative (i.e. semiotic) and quantitative analysis of the depictions of lyres and kitharai in Dionysiac contexts. Special attention will be paid to the dynamics of the Attic iconographic tradition in relation to changing performance practices, as well as to a contextualised reading of the atypical images of Marsyas playing chordophones within the output of the Kadmos and Pothos Painters.
Pornind de la o serie de exemple preluate din arealul culturii greco-romane, comunicarea de faţă îşi propune să aducă în atenţia publicului de specialitate atât rolul fundamental jucat de artefactul muzical şi contextul arheologic în cercetarea arheomuzicologică, cât şi relevanţa acesteia din urmă pentru arheologie. În ton cu dimensiunea performativă intrinsecă artefactelor muzicale, prezentarea va atinge problema demersurilor reconstrucţioniste ca metodă ştiinţifică, precum şi ca formă de patrimonialiare şi valorizare a cercetării arheologice în spaţiul public.
This paper will examine a series of contexts in which the aulos is represented on Attic Red-figure vases, in the attempt to draw a comparison between the easternising and alienating discourse on the aulos found in texts and Attic iconographical tradition. Can we identify a visual equivalent to the easternising discourse in literary sources? What semiotic functions does the aulos play in the economy of the image? Does it need a visual complement in order to allude to an Eastern context? In the attempt to answer these questions, this paper aims to explore new methodological perspectives in the iconographical investigation of cultural exchange between the East and the West in Classical Antiquity."
Abstract:
From the end of the 19th century down to the 1980s, the city of Bucharest has witnessed urban change on such a massive scale, as to make the mid-19th century urban landscape virtually unrecognizable to the current inhabitant of the city. Although the demolition of local lieux de mémoire was already eliciting protests in the 1880s, it was only after the turn of the century that a structured discourse on the pre-modern city acquired its distinctive blend of antiquarian inquiry and personal reminiscing, conservationist exhortations and undisguised nostalgia. Works such as Henri Stahl’s Fading Bucharest (Bucureștii ce se duc, 1910) encompassed photography as an integral part of this memorial practice, noting the irrecoverable lacunas in the 19th-century visual record of the city.
From the 1850s onwards, early photographic views of Bucharest have been compiled in albums and portfolios meant to showcase Wallachia or Romania at large, alongside ethnic ‘types’, monastic ensembles in the countryside and natural landscapes. While this early photographic output holds implicit documentary value, its relation to Bucharest specifically as a locus of memory, connoisseurship or impending change has remained elusive in the absence of programmatic texts. How is relevance constructed within the confined space of the photographic album? Where does the quest for the picturesque meet the desire to preserve the particularities of an unstable urban landscape through photography? Do such assemblages of urban views anticipate nostalgia from an inhabitant’s viewpoint, rather than unfolding the city for an outsider’s gaze? This contribution attempts to set these tentative questions on firm ground by taking a closer look at several Romanian albums ranging from the 1850s to the early 1900s, some of which have never been presented before in a scholarly setting.
Guest talk (in collaboration with Iris Șerban) hosted by the BRD Scena9 Residence in Bucharest (18 September 2021).
Guest talk in the architecture seminar directed by Prof. Florian Stanciu at the „Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism (25 March 2021).
Could it be that the socioeconomic mechanics at work behind the production of Attic painted pottery prevented a clearer reflection of these (presumably) divisive changes in the musical life of the Athenian polis, or should we look for subtler differences? Are absences and discontinuities in traditional imagery just as indicative of these undergoing cultural changes? This paper will attempt to formulate a partial answer by (1) taking a fresh look at the limited and less frequently discussed corpus of later 5th c. BC agonistic imagery, which seems to come to an abrupt end at the very height of the musical ‘revolution’, while also (2) bringing into discussion later series of ‘mythological’ images which document the survival and further development of agonistic references within the visual repertoire of 4th century Attic vase-painters. In turn, this analysis should contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the social visibility of New Music outside the milieu of professional musicians, sophists and knowledgeable aristocrats who came to preserve and filter, polemics left aside, the memory of this musical ‘revolution’.
What about the rest, then? The meagre textual corpus of later 5th and early 4th century melic poetry gives us limited knowledge of the discourse of New Music, let alone the entire array of Athenian perceptions on mousikē. Attic red-figure pottery, on the other hand, provides a substantial iconographic corpus designed to fit the tastes and needs of a much larger segment of Athenian and non-Athenian customers, while also allowing for a fine-grained analysis of atypical images in relation to specific workshops and destinations. Coming as a natural continuation of a paper delivered at the 5th MOISA conference (Salerno, 2012) and focused on late 6th and early 5th century images of satyr-citharodes, this presentation will re-examine the logical knot of the purported aulos-chordophones opposition in late 5th and early 4th century Attic vase-painting through a qualitative (i.e. semiotic) and quantitative analysis of the depictions of lyres and kitharai in Dionysiac contexts. Special attention will be paid to the dynamics of the Attic iconographic tradition in relation to changing performance practices, as well as to a contextualised reading of the atypical images of Marsyas playing chordophones within the output of the Kadmos and Pothos Painters.
Pornind de la o serie de exemple preluate din arealul culturii greco-romane, comunicarea de faţă îşi propune să aducă în atenţia publicului de specialitate atât rolul fundamental jucat de artefactul muzical şi contextul arheologic în cercetarea arheomuzicologică, cât şi relevanţa acesteia din urmă pentru arheologie. În ton cu dimensiunea performativă intrinsecă artefactelor muzicale, prezentarea va atinge problema demersurilor reconstrucţioniste ca metodă ştiinţifică, precum şi ca formă de patrimonialiare şi valorizare a cercetării arheologice în spaţiul public.
This paper will examine a series of contexts in which the aulos is represented on Attic Red-figure vases, in the attempt to draw a comparison between the easternising and alienating discourse on the aulos found in texts and Attic iconographical tradition. Can we identify a visual equivalent to the easternising discourse in literary sources? What semiotic functions does the aulos play in the economy of the image? Does it need a visual complement in order to allude to an Eastern context? In the attempt to answer these questions, this paper aims to explore new methodological perspectives in the iconographical investigation of cultural exchange between the East and the West in Classical Antiquity."
This paper will attempt to question the logical knot of the aulos-kithara opposition by investigating the presence of the kithara in dionysiac contexts and the problematic figure of the satyr-kitharodos, from its first appearances on Attic vases to the late fifth-century representations of Marsyas. I will argue that the kithara is included at face value in archaic and early classical dionysiac iconography, serving primarily as a reference to the musical anatomy of the cultic procession (pompē). Only after the mid-fifth century does the iconographic corpus show the signs of a major reconfiguration which associates the satyr-kitharodos with visual parody and polemic representations. Thus recontextualised within the Attic iconographic tradition and viewed in relation to the realia of the performance practices, the iconography of the satyr-musician outlines the changing perception of musical instruments and their ideal contexts in Athenian culture. "
Essay", has been recently published in Iaşi. The reviewer attempts to cover the main points of Csáky’s project of a
larger-scope approach to modernity and socio-cultural plurality in Austria-Hungary through the most popular theatrical
entertainment genre of the era – Viennese operetta –, while also highlighting several methodological questions raised by
the author’s approach.