Mousike and Mythos: The Role of Choral Performance in Later Euripidean Tragedy

This dissertation takes a new approach to the study of Greek theater by examining the dramatic function of mousike (music, song, dance) in the plays of Euripides. Previous scholarship has tended to see the many references to mousike in his later work only in connection with the "New Music" (the changes in musical style, language, and instruments in fifth-century Athens), and to disregard their place within the plays themselves, often deeming especially meta-musical choral odes to be irrelevant to the surrounding drama. In contrast, I explore the dynamics of choreia (choral song and dance) and the sociocultural meanings of different musical images in four plays to show how mousike plays a vital role in directing and complementing the movement of the plot. I demonstrate how Euripides uses traditional as well as new images of mousike, and argue that this combination of musical motifs is essential to an understanding of each play's dramatic structure.The dissertation is divided into four studies of individual plays, which span roughly the last fifteen years of Euripides' career. The first chapter focuses on Electra, the earliest extant tragedy to include multiple, extended descriptions of mousike. I argue that choreia both frames our understanding of Electra and has a generative power, anticipating and even enacting pivotal moments of the plot. In Chapter Two I examine how Hecuba and the chorus in Troades create the illusion of an absence of choreia, even while they sing and dance on stage, and liken this to the concept of "embodied absence" within Performance Studies. I also argue that the chorus' proclamation in the first stasimon that they will sing "new songs" refers not only to Euripides' experimentation at this point in his career, but to musical change within the drama itself. Chapter Three explores patterns of mousike and choreia in Helen, showing how the dominance of such imagery in the play's choral odes shapes the audience's understanding of Helen's relationship with the chorus. I suggest that the play's mousike creates an aetiology not only of Helen's cult in Sparta, but also of the Dionysiac performance of the chorus of Athenian citizens in the theater. Chapter Four examines the dynamics of chorality and monody in Iphigenia in Aulis, showing how, through the performance of mousike, the audience's attention is directed away from the panhellenic choreia of the parodos and toward the sacrifice of Iphigenia. I also explore how representations of instrumental mimesis provide a poignantly vivid impression of pastoral calm before the beginning of the Trojan War, and argue for the authenticity of contested lines at the end of the tragedy on the basis of their style of musical performance. Throughout the dissertation, my methodology centers on the idea that a complex interaction between described and performed mousike encourages the audience to see and hear a performance in a particular way--a form of aesthetic suggestion through choreia