Le monodie di Aristofane. Metro musica drammaturgia

This thesis represents the first attempt to a systematic study of the lyric form “monody” in Aristophanes’ entirely preserved plays. The analysis of the relationship among metre, text and scene is the main purpose of this work, in order to understand Aristophanes’ musical and dramaturgical choices as regards the monodies. The first part of the work is devoted to presenting an overall definition of “monody”. First of all, I present and comment the attestations of the words μονῳδία and μονῳδέω referring to the Greek drama of V century b.C.; secondly I discuss the definitions of the above-mentioned terms, in order to define the ancient concept of “monody”; finally, I propose the criteria for identifying the monodies in Aristophanes’ comedies, by considering their most “technical” features, and I also consider and discuss modern debate on the monodic form. Furthermore, I discuss the fortune of tragic monody compared to the silence of ancient sources about the comic one, the relationship between tragic solo songs and comedy, and the evidence of the variety of comic monodies. The second part of the thesis consists in the analysis of Aristophanes’ 21 monodies. For each comedy, a list of the considered manuscripts and a short note on the manuscript tradition are provided. I propose, then, an analysis of each song, paying particular attention to metrics. Ancient colometries appear generally consistent with each other and so accepted in my work; whenever it is necessary to restore a colometry, choices are explained and justified in detail. The metrical analysis takes into account ancient metrical-rhythmical treatises and scholia, examining the coherence between structures and ancient metrical interpretation. The comment consists in a thorough investigation of the metrical-musical “idea” of each monody, section by section or even colon by colon. Special attention is paid to the relationship between the song and the comic scene as much as between the song and other lyric genres, looking in particular at the inner metrical structure, at the metrical aprosdoketa, at the metrical variation or observance of a possible model or tradition, at poetic echoes, and so on. Form and function appear to be always strictly connected, even when in contrast to each other, and the accurate analysis of the metrical forms reveals a lot of details related to the dramaturgy. In order to provide the most complete idea of the staging of the monodies, every indication concerning musical aspects arising from the text, parepigraphai and scholia, such as the modalities of instrumental accompaniment or dancing, is considered and discussed.