Search results for "paean."
showing 5 items of 5 documents
Musical Remedies for Deadly Problems. Music Therapy in the Homeric Poems
2009
The attempt to cure illnesses by having recourse to music is one of the most interesting phenomena of ancient Greek culture, but also one of the most controversial, because of the complex relations between religion, magic, medicine and music constituting its background. Beginning from the Iliad (I, 472-474), the paean represents the song par excellence, “that puts an end to the plague”. Wholly different from this is healing through the epode, the “sung charm”, in Book XIX of the Odyssey, which gives us the first testimony of this remedy.The fundamental intent of such treatment seems to be to remedy the physical pain: in this sense, the epode, as a sung magic formula, in my opinion was inten…
Music and Medicine
2020
The relationship between music and medicine involves the notions of affinity between the human body and musical structures, relief, catharsis and therapy. The Homeric poems attest to the use of healing songs (paeans) and spells (epaoidai). The early Pythagoreans used musical catharsis for both the soul and the body. The doctrine of musical ēthos (whose main source is Plato) presupposes a relationship between music and character based on mimēsis, also establishing a link between therapy and ēthos. According to Aristotle, melodies performed in the rites are able to arou-se the emotions and purify from their excesses (the same dynamics appear in Theophrastus). The musical notions first detecta…
Singing to the Wind
2021
Abstract This paper focuses on a passage of Himerius’ Oration 47 (Simon. fr. 251 Poltera = 535 PMG + p. 157 SLG), where Simonides is cited for a song that leads a ship with favourable winds, and on a passage in Plutarch’s Quaestiones Convivales (722b–c) quoting a Simonidean fragment (17 Poltera = 595 PMG) on the propagation of sounds through still air. I argue that they both can be linked with the Argonautic myth of Orpheus. In fact, the former might have some connections with the myth of Oreithyia and Boreas, parents of Zetes and Kalaïs, involved in the Argonautic expedition; moreover, it has some similarities with a fragment from Euripides’ Hypsipyle (752g Kannicht) representing Orpheus o…
Musica, catarsi ed eunomía. I Pitagorici in Magna Grecia e l'uso terapeutico del peana.
2011
Accanto allo sviluppo del pensiero filosofico-scientifico e al sorgere di nuovi ordinamenti politici in diverse poleis, la presenza delle comunità pitagoriche in Magna Grecia sembra aver dato impulso anche a livello religioso -ad esempio, con l’affermarsi del culto di Apollo- e musicale. A tale riguardo, si propone una riflessione sulla musicoterapia presso i Pitagorici antichi, e in particolare sull’uso da parte loro del peana, come emerge ad esempio nella Vita Pythagorica di Giamblico (§ 110: la catarsi “primaverile” di gruppo) e nella Vita Pythagorae di Porfirio (§ 32). Il peana, che nella tradizione appare rivolto soprattutto a calmare l’ira (in particolare quella divina, come emerge da…
The Pythagoreans and the Therapeutic Effects of the Paean between Religion, Paideia and Politics
2016
The interest of the Early Pythagoreans in musical speculation appears in literary sources as strictly linked with religion and education. The use of paeans for healing and calming both rage and anger among the Pythagoreans (see for instance Iamblichus, De vita pythagorica 110; Porphyrius, Vita Pythagorae 30) shows that catharsis was meant within such groups as a “purification” from every kind of excess in which religion, medicine and ethics were blended together in order to provide a harmonious order within the individuals. Music and musical education in Pythagorean communities had also a “political” role, since they were intended to foster social order.