MIKE-AGM · MUSICAL IDENTITIES, KNOWLEDGE, AND EXCHANGE IN THE ARCHAIC GREEK MEDITERRANEAN (700-480 BCE)
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2022-04-01 → 2024-05-02
- EU contribution
- €174,167
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
MUSICAL IDENTITIES, KNOWLEDGE, AND EXCHANGE IN THE ARCHAIC GREEK MEDITERRANEAN (700-480 BCE)
The MIKE-AGM project arose from the need to better understand the wider socio-cultural uses and developments of music in the period c. 700-480 BCE, focusing on the Greeks of the ancient Mediterranean and their wider cultural contacts, and in particular how musical knowledge was created and exchanged, and how it contributed to community identities. To achieve this, the project focused on three main strands of research. The first focused on better understanding the musical instruments that survive from this period. The second looked at collating and studying relevant musical iconography. The third looked at what contemporary texts can reveal about the wider contexts in which music of the period was conducted. In all three strands of research the focus was on seeing how music contributed to ancient identities and knowledge, and how musical customs and traditions were exchanged. Since the Palaeolithic, humans have made musical instruments. Today, music is more easily accessible then ever; Spotify alone has over 600 million users. However, for most of human history, music has required the presence of musicians and audiences in the same space, making the performance of music a key cultural event, to say nothing of the people who made these instruments. How did the Greeks of the Archaic period go about organising music, what did music mean to them and why? To date, surviving lyrics from Greek poetry have been used as the main source to answer this question, this project looks to the material culture of music too.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
This project is the first extended analysis of musical regionalism and exchange in the Archaic Greek Mediterranean (700-480 BCE). It employs interdisciplinary methodologies and evidence (literary analysis, epigraphy, iconography, archaeology, organology, and music cognition ). This project is possible because I approach a key body of evidence, Archaic Greek figural pottery, with new methodologies. Critiqued through the lens of new materialism and object centred analyses, this pottery depicts a wealth of music iconography across a range of regional compositions and styles. Further, with appropriate methodological considerations, the trade distribution of this pottery can be used as a proxy for routes of musical exchange. Music was one of many invisible commodities in ancient Greece. This evidence will be enhanced by an in-depth analysis of surviving musical instruments, using methodologies such as adapted object biographies to look at instruments as evidence for the social lives of those who made, played, and listened to them, and the ways that individual instruments held different meanings in different regions. In this way, I build on and move away from the ‘archaeology of contexts’ developed by recent music archaeology, and develop a system for focusing on the materialism of musical objects. These corpora are supplemented by epigraphic and literary evidence to reconstruct the extent to which the musical regionalisms recorded by poets resemble those suggested by the material evidence, or if they function more as literary devices. This body of evidence will be used for an open visual database of material relating to ancient Greek music.Dr. Hagel’s expertise in ancient music theory and instruments and his work in creating digital tools to assist with the study of ancient music, is of vital importance for this project. In turn, I would bring expertise in Archaic Greek society, art and material culture and new methodological perspectives.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- OESTERREICHISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN · WienCoordinatorAustria
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union