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• ↓ Part 3: Analysis, Neoanalysis, and the Set List
• ↓ Part 2: Evidence for ‘Episodes’ from Literature and Art
• ↓ Part 1: Singers in Homer and the Panathenaic Rule
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"As a general rule, scholars of a certain vintage resist the comparison between Homeric composition and the work of jazz musicians, thinking too much, I suspect, about improvisation and not enough about the dynamic interplay between a shared ‘song’ and the variations it can take in any given performance on stage, depending on the musicians present, what they have been listening to, and the energy of a particular audience on stage. Ersilia Dolci has written about how rhapsodic performance and jazz music are united by a flexibility of formulaic “patterns” within traditional schemes. (I also think there may be a class/race based prejudice at play here.)"

"Authors have in recent years focused more on the public impact of epic: Graciela Cristina Zecchin de Fasano emphasizes the importance of pleasure (terpsis) in the dimension of performance, while Manon Brouillet has emphasized the significance of kharis (“grace/pleasure”) and thambos (“”wonder”) in the dynamic ritual performance of Homer–each, in a way, dovetail with what we know about epic performance from sources like Plato’s Ion and anticipate some of my speculations about Homer and tragedy."

"Homeric epic has multiple models for episodic performance: we often trot out Demodocus, Phemios, or even Achilles as representations of ‘bards’ or singers within the poems. But there is no easy way to move from these inset, short performances, to the notion of the Iliad or the Odyssey  in their entirety. I have discussed in earlier posts ideas about book divisions and the relationship between episodes and the whole epic. But my notion of episodes cleverly woven together–echoing the idea of “stitching” reconstructed in the word rhapsode or in “joining/fitting” in the etymologizing of Homeros as “one who fits the song together”–seems too much like a textual editorial process, and too little situated in notions of (live) performance."

"In general, I think we have a few metaphors to use to help us think about epic composition at the level of monumental performance. I have been playing with the idea of a “live album” (which I will share in a few weeks); but we also have the example of advanced musicians coming together to play through a shared canon. Gregory Nagy and Jose Gonzalez have both written extensively on the “Panathenaic rule”. In this system, under the sponsorship of the state of Athens, performers were required to perform Homeric epic in relay, that is, taking up the story one from another in pursuit of the whole. Such a performance would necessarily encourage both collaboration and competition. Consider a group of talented musicians playing a standard tune, taking turns soloing as each instrument is featured in turn. Now imagine someone recording it. The resulting ‘text’ is a fixed version of standard, reshaped by the the performers, the space, and the recording itself."

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Part 3: Analysis, Neoanalysis, and the Set List

Part 2: Evidence for ‘Episodes’ from Literature and Art

Part 1: Singers in Homer and the Panathenaic Rule

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