The Greek Chorus Explained (Part 1)
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- Опубліковано 31 лип 2024
- Hi Folks,
This week we’re tackling the one of the toughest barriers to understanding Greek tragedy: the role of the chorus. The chorus seems unusual if you have not studied Greek tragedy before and some of my students have even been tempted to skip these passages in the past. Don’t! They offer so much to our understanding of the story, our judgement of the characters and the pace of the action.
This video is a beginner’s guide to the chorus in Greek tragedy, who they are, how they interact with the main characters and what they offer to the performance overall. I’ll help you understand key concepts such as ode, epode, strophe and antistrophe so that you can navigate the chorus’ passages and understand them better.
As promised here is the link to the project on music in Greek tragedy:www.classics.ox.ac.uk/recreat...
Don’t forget to comment and let me know what you want to know about Greek tragedy. Please like, subscribe and share to keep the channel going.
Thanks,
Dr M x
www.redbubble.com/people/Mari... - Фільми й анімація
Great, Dear Maria, the Chorus was moving and more than that, D A N C I N G ! Orchestra- the "round" thing- was where
the ΟΡΧΗΣΙΣ (DANCE) took place, as You just said. Renaissance Opera is a try for the Drama in a the New World.
A Greek friend, Nikephoros. (my humble opinion)
WOW thank you so much I was having such a hard time explaining it but you really made it clear! Thank you
No problem! You are welcome. Let me know if you have any suggestions for future videos 😊👩🏫
Makes so much sense. Bravo 👌👌
Thanks for this! I’m watching these videos to help with my drama exam coming up for Greek chorus. This video is great and really helps ☺️
Thanks for the lovely comment. I've not made anything new in a while because of work but should have more videos up in summer 😊👍 Good luck with your drama exam!
It is a lovely video to show to my Greek Theatre students to use as an academic reference! Thank you!
You're welcome! Thanks for the lovely comment and sorry for the slow reply- my device didn't notify me. Let me know if you have any suggestions for future videos.
Will you share your lesson plan that you did please?
Thank you for this wonderful explanation!
You're very welcome, let me know if you have any suggestions for future videos. 👍
Love from India🇮🇳 i got an exam in upcoming month's and needed a brief explanation to it, due to health issues i couldn't join classes so your video helped me a lot❤️ thanks a lot Mam🙏
Thank you so much for this video! I'm doing an early modern play for my dissertation and it has a chorus in it which has really been baffling, so this helped a lot!
You're very welcome! Which play is it?
@@MillennialClassicist The Tragedy of Cleopatra by Samuel Daniels
@@ringdonuts8125 cool, if it is early modern then they may use a Roman tragedian Seneca to inspire their use of the chorus too. 😊 good luck on your assignment!
@@MillennialClassicist oh cool!
Thanks!
Tysm I have a drama assessment on what is a chorus thank you so much :)
Could you do this video again, but have 3-15 of your friends sing/explain it to us?
Brilliant, I liked that
Studying first year mythology and this is really helpful I really struggled reading Agamemnon after reading the Iliad and the odyssey due to the different styles but this is delivered very understandably
Thanks for the lovely comment, I'll look into delivering more tragedy videos. I have videos on the Odyssey and Aeneid, have a look :)
THAT ... was actually super cool! I'm sitting here trying to broadening my understanding of how to write music with some new dimensions and I'm googling and video surfing for words and "antistrophe" led me here! I've heard a little about Greek drama way back (!) in school but we didn't care about it then and nor did the teachers ... It was more like "Old dead Greek stuff ... good riddance!". This video was much more alive and inspiring! :D
Some sick stuff you can do with grouping voices and instruments together or put them in contrast or ... and ... or ... hmmm! THANK YOU!
Thank you so much for this video ,Iam about to give a presentation on this topic ; helps me a lot .
You're welcome! Good luck with your presentation :)
You are really really amazing thank you so much you have been so helpful
You are welcome! Thank you for the lovely comment. :)
My english teacher told us to watch this but i cant concentrate so im just sat giving my dog some food
What a useless comment to make. But I guess you can only communicate with your dog, given your level of understanding. No, apologies for that! Your dog must be smarter than you for sure!
Did you read nietzsche's birth of tragedy?can you make videos explaining it more clearly in ancient context?
Currenlty I am reading Lysistrata in a greek comedy course, there is a parados where the chorus comes in , what is a parados? I tried to search it but couldnt find anything.
Parados is when a chorus comes forward to give their speech or song to the audience. Part 2 of this video on my channel goes through parados and eisodos 😊👍
Oh that makes sense,Ike very time they appear or just the first one? Clearly I need to watch the whole second part 😂
Also where would recommend to learn more about Athenian comedy and Greek comedy?
Thank You again!!
@@danielpleitez-martinez7638 I'll be doing some comedy videos soon. Eisodos is their entrance, parodos is when they come forward. Either can happen multiple times 😊👍
Sounds good Thank You!
hey, thank you. I'm on a strange hunt to hear anything and everything I possibly can of 'real' chorus music from tragedies. Any pointers would be deeply appreciated. It's a bit of an obsession at this point.
Hi, thanks for commenting and for your patience whilst I reply. If you look on the Pronomos Vase you can see the different instruments that would have been used in the theatre (I'll make a video on this in the next few months). Oxford University have a research project to ty and reconstruct the sound of Greek music: www.torch.ox.ac.uk/ancient-music-and-theology-network-0 Note that it would have most likely been different for comedy, because the only unmasked character in comedy would be the hetaira flute-girl, who would play a double reeded instrument like the aulos. Hope this helps!
I see a lot of artistic potential for using the chorus to mess around with the audience, or plant certain ideas or expectations or interpretations in the audiences' head only to subvert those, if one were to use that format today.
In the 20th Century TS Eliot copied Ancient Greek practice by including a Chorus of 'Poor Women of Canterbury' in his play 'Murder in the Cathedral', about the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas á Beckett.
Having studied the play long ago for 'A' level English Literature and seen it performed twice, I find the Chorus the least interesting part of it. I think it would be a better play if productions left out the Chorus entirely and got straight on to Beckett, the Tempters and the Knights, which is the good part.
I used to think this meant that Choruses were a bad idea in drama. However, watching this video made me think about it further.
The Ancient Greeks used their alphabet variously to write words, numbers and musical notation. However, they were much more successful at using it to write words, and therefore to record for posterity their poetry, dramatic dialogue, speeches etc.
Their method of musical notation, on the other hand, was clumsy, recording notes but with no indication of length of notes or rhythm. Without that, music is flat and lifeless.
As far as I know, they had no method of recording choreography. Consequently, the texts of Ancient Greek dramas that have come down to us preserve only one element of the Chorus, the words they spoke, and lose the other main elements, the music and dance.
Hence, when TS Eliott attempted to copy Ancient Greek drama by including a spoken Chorus in Murder in the Cathedral, he was not really copying a genuine Greek Chorus but only the pale imitation of it that is all we have from manuscripts, words without the music and dance. That is why it is the least interesting part of his play. It is almost as if an opera or an all singing, all dancing musical was performed just as actors speaking the words on stage, without the music and dance.
Thank you, Millennial Classicist, for helping me to understand that.
Hello Ma'am i am a litrature Lecturer so need some help from you about Greek Tragedy. Especially the element of tragedy in stage play nad drama.
Please share me your instagram to have some conversation with you.
Hi thanks for commenting. Take a look at my video on Aristotle's Poetics for a good introduction to Greek tragedy.
so essentially, there are a commentary group who sing and dance as well as pseak, are they part of the story or only comment?
Hi Daniel, That is generally correct. However, the chorus have different degrees of involvement in the story depending on the play. Euripides' choruses, for example, sometimes take a more prominent role such as the chorus of Trojan Women in Trojan Women. This is sometimes easy to spot through the titles of the play (which were given by later authors based on how prominent the chorus were) e.g. Aeschylus' Libation Bearers and Eumenides present the chorus to drive the plot through their interactions with key characters. Hope that helps!
Thank You
Omg my English teacher is so shit I needed this
Glad this helped! 👍
I have play...Doctor Faustus😍
Great video but would you ever consider turning down the music in the background a bit? Its kind of distracting and makes it hard to focus on what you’re saying.
Will do on future videos as I've had that comment elsewhere 😊 thanks
@@MillennialClassicist thank you!😊
Hello dear, thank you for your beautiful explanation but I wanna ask you why they look creepy and why they wear masks and stuff like that🤔
Hi, thanks for commenting and for your patience whilst I reply. The main cause of the masks would be so that their fixed expressions would be visible from the back of the theatre. Although in the fifth-century masks might have been more naturalistic, they became very exaggerated in the Roman era (1C BC). The masks were also a good way of distinguishing a demographic in the chorus, for example, the chorus might represent the old men of Argos (Agamemnon) or the worshippers of Dionysus (Bacchae), so for the chorus the masks would offer some uniformity and set them apart from key characters on stage. Generally, masks were also a genre-marker, with distinct masks for comedy, tragedy and satyr play. Hope this helps!
Hi, Video is really helpful. Just a suggestion, Please don't use background music. It creates interruption.
Thanks and Best Wishes!
Dis anyone?
*lazybumdaniel * yea
I can't move my eyes from her face, because I'm fallen in love with her beautiful eyes 😍 . LoL 😅,but true
creep
A very erudite and interesting exegesis. However, the music distracts. It's like you're being placed on hold by a corporation based in Hades.
partly agree. would be good to not have music or only bring it in during certain points. otherwise just lower the volume.
The music is very loud and distracting
Anyone else watching this In drama
yep..
A beautiful girl with a British accent who talks about tragedy. 😍
weird and inappropriate...
@@bluebellbeatnik4945 I think I was being flirtatious only.
I sooooo wish, at least docos are not polluted with sound effects, like music. It's irritating, it's interfering with the sound of the narrator, it is bloody Unnecessary!