Mark Griffith, in my opinion one of the finest classicists in the world dealing with Ancient Greek drama, explores music and dance in a way that he will continue with “Is Korybantic Performance a (Lyric) Genre?” (in M. Foster, L. V. Kurke, and N. Weiss, eds., The Genres of Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry, forthcoming, Leiden: Brill 2019) and that he started with “Cretan Harmonies and Universal Morals: Early Music and Migration of Wisdom in Plato's Laws” (in Performance and Culture in Plato's Laws, ed. A-E. Peponi, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2013, pp. 15-66), if not earlier. Both works, and especially the publication from 2013, which I heartily praise in ADMC, would fittingly be required reading for a university dance history course, because they give the background of music and dance for not only archaic and classical Ancient Greece but Plato and Aristotle. These two thinkers form the foundation of dance theory for the great ballet theorists of the post-Renaissance and obviously also of Western literary and dramatic theory for most, if not all, aestheticians.
As the title indicates, “Music and Dance in Tragedy after the Fifth Century” extends Griffith's research into music and dance through the eras after the great surviving tragedians of the fifth century BCE. The article would be, if not another required reading for dance historians, at least a recommended one because of the lack of dance theory from Plato, who gives the most recognized account of dance for Ancient Greece in the Laws VII-VIII, until Athenaeus (around 200 CE), with Lucian (c. 120-180 CE) and then Libanius (314-393 CE) offering the equivalent of a modern-day article each. Only with the aptly named “Re-naissance” do we get a rebirth of theory relying on the ancients, but invariably the ballet theorists did not recognize how truly important dance is for Plato and Aristotle, because like even classicists until the beginning of the 21st century, they all missed, e.g., that rhuthmos usually means “ordered body movement” or dance for the two philosophers in the context of orchestral art. Instead, they misconstrued the term as an aspect of music or verse, rhythm qua temporal order.
I very reluctantly, then, disagree with Griffith when it comes to his interpretation of Aristotle, but disagree I must. He takes for the most part, and if only by implication, not only the standard misconceptions of rhuthmos for Aristotle but melos and related musical terms. The misconceptions have been, to apply Sifakis's apt phrase, established by mere repetition over centuries rather than by soundness of the interpretation of Aristotle's various topics (Return to Comments on Sifakis in ADMCupdates). Melos is equivocal, just like many other Greek terms, and in Chapter 6 (along with melopoiia) it must mean “music-dance” (and the “making of music-dance”), otherwise one will never resolve centuries-old dilemmas there.
Yet progress is being made. Griffith emphasizes astutely that:
It is often stated—wrongly—that Greek tragedy steadily evolved throughout its history, to become less musical and more purely rhetorical and speech-focused. But in fact, to judge from what the limited evidence tells us, tragedy appears to have maintained its musical focus even during the course of manifold changes and innovations, right up until Late Antiquity. That is to say, for anyone going to see a Greek tragedy performed, it would usually have been taken for granted that there would be singing, pipe-playing and dancing. This was musical theatre [p. 204; my italics].
Of course, Aristotle could have had a different view, in part because he recognizes those like Chaeremon who wrote plays only for reading at the most, not for full production in the theater. Yet as I demonstrated first in my PhD dissertation in 1992 (Unearthing Aristotle's Dramatics: Why There is No Theory of Literature in the POETICS, the University of Toronto), then in a subset of the dissertation, “The Poetics of Performance: The Necessity of Performance, Spectacle, Music, and Dance in Aristotelian Tragedy” (Cambridge, 1999), and finally in its revision in ADMC 2, this reading-only type of play is not the kind analyzed in the Dramatics, especially given the inclusion of “music” as an essential condition in the definition of tragedy in Chapter 6. In short, Griffith's view applies perfectly well to the Northern Greek from Stagira and it is gratifying to see that more and more scholars are revising the traditional, literary view of tragedy in favor of the performance view, reluctant as they may be to acknowledge my own work in this respect concerning the Stagirite (and there is no doubt that they are aware of some of my publications, given their bibliographies and discussions at conferences). Loyalties die hard, as does the desire to preserve reputations and royalties, and as some internationally known specialists who support my views but who recognize how revolutionary they are have said, it probably will not be until the current generation of specialists of the “Poetics” retire or die that a new generation of scholars will have the willingness and flexibility to write with a sounder grasp of what Aristotle was really proposing, namely, that tragedy (for Aristotle) is, as Griffith says, “musical theatre.”Aristotle...sees his own main original contribution to the appreciation of tragōidia as being his focus on plot-construction (muthos), which he regards as the subtlest and most sophisticated mechanism for achieving the key 'pleasures' of pity, fear and 'affect' in general (pathos) (p. 212).
I am not sure why Griffith thinks the focus on plot is the “main original contribution” when it could be the analysis of tragedy as a whole that Aristotle took most pride in. Clearly the Stagirite ranked plot the highest of the six necessary elements of tragedy in Chapter 6 (with character being second, “thought” (dianoia) third, speech/language (lexis) fourth, (the making of) music-dance (melopoiia) fifth and spectacle (opsis) last. Whether plot is the most “sophisticated” mechanism is doubtful. All the elements can be sophisticated in their own way, as the beginning of Chapter 14 confirms, which is where Aristotle says that the better dramatist will accomplish the effect of pity and fear through the plot rather through the spectacle. Yet this has more to do with the expertise of the dramatist in Aristotle's view, who composes with plot, music, dance and verse, following but restricting Diotima's explanation of what a composer (poiētēs) is. Yet let us grant Griffith this point. Still, that only shows how plot and spectacle compare. How about language and the other elements? Language can in some ways for Aristotle be most precise and thus most sophisticated; it has a power (dunamis) that, e.g., dance does not (e.g., the development from dance to speech in Chapter 4 and the dunamis of both prose and verse in Chapter 6). Also, character-laden speech could be superbly done in various, sophisticated ways and yet someone presenting a basic plot (qua action on stage) would give more satisfaction even if its accompanying speech were ineffectual (6.1450a27-32). Surely the “satisfaction” here must be one of the “affects” that Griffith mentions alongside pity and fear. By implication, as Griffith rightly grasps (although he does not say it specifically for this passage), an enacted plot is what is expected by the audience coming to the theater. Griffith does not seem to recognize, however, or at least never acknowledges, that plot could be done with acting or dance for Aristotle, without any words whatsoever; cf. Dramatics 1, 2, 4 & 6 with, e.g., what the dancers can do all by themselves (convey ethos, pathos, and “action”). Clearly if the actions were ordered (which is what Aristotle says plot is in Chapter 6), the dancers could present a plot (think of our Swan Lake), although whether the Greeks ever did a full-length ballet is questionable. However, Chapter 4 shows that the earliest tragedies, with trivial plots, were almost all dance, and thus the question for the moment is not what was done in ancient Athens in the 4th century BCE but what plot means for the Stagirite. We need to take the empiricist Aristotle at his word in Chapter 6, and we need to appreciate Griffith's own view of tragedy until Late Antiquity, which is not the view of commentators who for generations thought tragedy (at least for the Northern Greek) was a species of literature....he [Aristotle] seems to share wholeheartedly the elite disdain for spectacle and musical variety that his teacher Plato had previous expounded in several contexts (Republic, Laws, etc.)... all that matters is that Aristotle does in fact recognize that music and visual spectacle are two important extra ingredients that epic poety lacks, and that therefore render tragedy more complete and satisfying as an art form (p. 212; my italics).
“Wholeheartedly” and “disdain” are much too strong. Plato praises the Egyptians for their long-time uniformity. However, while Aristotle shares some concern for the type of music that will be used in various contexts, he allows the exciting music of the aulos for catharsis (Politics VIII 6) and other kinds for other purposes depending on the scenario (VIII 7). He argues against Plato and Socrates censoring the Phrygian mode (VIII 7) and emphasizes at the end of VIII 7 that the vulgar classes should have competitions and music-dance that they can appreciate. It sounds like our allowance for some to attend opera (or jazz) and others to attend pop music concerts. Moreover, just because the Northern Greek places spectacle last in the list of the six necessary conditions of tragedy does not mean he disdains it. Many of us appreciate film with a scintillating plot, convincing characterization and good cinematography (including sets and costumes) even if we place the plot first and character second (like Aristotle). Surely we are not disdaining the visual elements of the film. Likewise for the Northern Greek, otherwise why would he discuss the importance of staging correctly (Chapters 15 and 17)? Moreover, why would he bring opsis in as an element that causes tragedy to be, contra Plato, better than epic (Chapter 26)? Also on that point, and the “two important extra ingredients”: Sadly, in a usually impressive and beautiful article on the important of dance in tragedy, Griffith simply misses that the term he translates as “music” here, mousikē, is really “music-dance” (cf. Politics VIII 7 and my explanation in ADMC 4).