Song Seminar - Animal Choruses in Archaic and Classical Greek Vase Painting

Wednesday 21 November, 12.30-2 pm in Emmanuel College (Harrods Room)

Naomi Weiss (Harvard) – 'Performance, Memory, and Affect: Animal Choruses in Archaic and Classical Greek Vase Painting'

In this presentation I explore how ancient Greek images of choral song and dance—activities unified in the term choreia—engage a viewer's experience of musical performance. I focus in particular on a series of Attic pots, mostly from the mid- to late sixth century BCE, that show choruses of animals and animal-riders singing and dancing, usually to the accompaniment of a double pipe (the aulos). These pots are often assumed to be "proto-comic," appearing at the same time as dramatic festivals were developing at Athens. Rather than seeing them as records of particular theatrical scenes, I suggest that we should understand them as expansive and flexible in terms of the songs they convey: they can reproduce the phenomenology of an entire production as well as that of one moment within it; they can also suggest affinities to other performances of choreia, thus drawing on a broader choral repertoire. By evoking the multisensory, multilayered experience of theater, these vessels position their users as audience members once more. At the same time, by cueing a viewer's embodied memory of being a choral performer himself, they can draw him into participating in their own musical productions.

Song Seminar Wednesday 25 April, 12.30-2.00: Ewan Jones on Entrainment and Aesthetics

The first of two Interdisciplinary Song seminars this term will be held on Weds 25 April, in the Harrods Room of Emmanuel College, from 12.30 to 2.00.

Ewan Jones will present a paper entitled 'What entrainment can teach aesthetics'. Description: This paper will explore the ethnomusicological and biological concept of entrainment, which explores the tendency for organisms to synchronise their endogenous rhythms to external periods or phases. Under its aspect, I will consider eighteenth- and nineteenth-century texts ranging that include Adam Smith, Charles Dickens and George Eliot. Some of these texts feature songs. 

As usual, tea, coffee and biscuits will be provided, and participants are encouraged to bring their own lunch should they wish. All are warmly welcome

Show - Song of Contagion

Song of Contagion hits the stage in London on June 13-17th. The show mashes the world's great musical traditions together into a show that explores how industry lobbying, patient activism and media hype interact to distort priority setting in global health. You can book tickets here. More about the show and the project here.

If you've never been to Wilton's, it's worth coming to the show just to see this fantastic Victoran-era music hall in all its crumbling, East End glory (the BBC Proms follow us to Wilton's in July). Come also, of course, because Song of Contagion will be thought-provoking and damned good fun. Wilton's is within walking distance of the last cholera outbreak in London (1866) - the subject of one of our songs.

On Saturday June 17th, London historian, guide and all-round great entertainer Sophie Campbell will lead a walk exploring how the disease, and the great Victorian engineering project that wiped it out, affected Londoners. Sign up here.

Recap - Breath

Our second meeting of this term was 'a gas', as we explored the poetics and possibilities of pneumatic medicine. Our discussion of Polwhele's 'Eclogue' focused on a few themes:

• 'Aero-medical science'

We considered the optimism around new gaseous discoveries and technologies, and the confidence that new kinds of air could be used as therapy and remedy. We explored the Romanticism of this kind of auto-experimentation, and the key role of figures such as Davy and Beddoes, and places such as the Pneumatic Institution. Comparison between epistolary, prose, and our set poetic descriptions of the effects of inhaling nitrous oxide, demonstrated how Polwhele drew on these other accounts, but pushed them to a satiric extreme.

• Scientific poetry

We also set the poem in the context of a long 18thC tradition of verses on the Universe, or Botanic Garden, from Pope to Erasmus Darwin. We thought about the different poetic forms this corpus engaged with: some epic, some didactic, some comic (as here). Overall, we discussed how poetry like this formed a key part of (elite) British scientific culture at the time, including commentary on recent discoveries, and conveying accurate information (via footnotes, etc.). Indeed, the use of footnotes by Polwhele was a key topic of conversation.

• Politics and fashion

We thought about how these publications were written in the shadow of the French Revolution, Terror, and Napoleonic Wars: in its very name the conservative Anti-Jacobin Review (where our text first appeared) echoed these concerns. We discussed the contrasting political commitments of conservative Polwhele with the more progressive politics of Beddoes, etc., hence the criticism of them under the guise of this poem. In general, we also thought about the contemporary fad or fashion for Laughing Gas (songs, satirical prints), and made comparisons with Davy's subsequently fashionable lectures at the Royal Institution.

• The poem's success?

We agreed we had all enjoyed reading the poem, and its often superbly awful choice of rhymes; but that perhaps not all of its references were that easy to 'get', and that not all of its humour survives over two hundred years later. We thought about the different voices and characters of the (real) people depicted, and whether or not the author - with contrasting poetic styles - had succeeded in conveying this variegated and personalised bodily experience effectively. As the only stimulant we had to hand was sugar (in the form of a birthday cake for Simon), perhaps a full answer to that last question was not possible.

We closed the evening with the promised performance of two historic songs about Laughing Gas: the songs can be downloaded here and here from the Wellcome Images site.

Yours truly at the piano, with members of the group looking on. Photograph by Charissa.

Laughing Gas sheet music. Photograph by Charissa.

Next term - Fire

Our meetings for Michaelmas Term 2016 will be themed around 'Fire', giving us the opportunity to discuss everything from ancient elements to far-flung suns, pottery to passion, experimental practice and hellfire. Watch out for the full schedule later on this summer; and email Melanie if you have a burning desire to add anything to the reading list!

Meanwhile, enjoy these playlists of music about fire:

• Classical
• Songs

Song - The Scientific Frog

The Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection, Johns Hopkins University.

Download the sheet music here!

Event - Public Health and Private Pain: A Night of Medical History and Drama

Thursday 5 May at 7pm, Museum of the History of Science, Broad Street, Oxford

Enter the Museum for a unique evening of performance and drama. Drawing from a rich variety of medical plays and historical material, the event will illuminate, provoke, and dramatize developments which have shaped ideas of the body from the 18th century to the present day. Join academics from across the University of Oxford, professional actors from the Pegasus Theatre and staff of the Museum of the History of Science as they show how these developments have been mapped not just by medical writing but by theatre, which has a long history of engaging with science and medicine.

Scenes and readings will include:

• Shelagh Stephenson, An Experiment with an Air-pump (1998)
• George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906)
• Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts (1881)
• A selection from the WWI poetry collection at Oxford by Sassoon and Owen
• An historical anti-vaccination song
• Joe Penhall, Blue/Orange (2000)

To book your free ticket, please register on Eventbrite here.

Recap - Phrenological Genres

Our first meeting of the academic year brought together Sci-Lit stalwarts with first-time attendees (with a particularly strong showing from the HPS MPhil cohort!), to discuss all things phrenological.

As ever, the conversation ranged widely, from discussions of the impact of urbanisation to the characters of software engineers, Walt Whitman's phrenological reading to the psychic effects of Fantastic Voyage-style adventures inside one's own head. Amongst other topics, we explored the role of physical analogies in these texts, from the cartographic nature of phrenology as mapping the mind and brain, or constructing a chambered house inhabited by different faculties; as well as the roles of analogy and allegory more generally. We thought about how these texts could reveal the consequences of a society based solely (from dress and jewellery to doctors and jurisprudence) on phrenological principles, or of the role for free will if character were truly fixed by crania. We discussed the perennial appeal of phrenology as a test-case for policing the boundaries of scientific disciplines and practitioners, right from its first development: was this really an 'outré science', as Tennyson had it, and if so what did that mean? As highlighted from the outset, generic form was also analysed as one way of accessing an early 19thC world of interdisciplinary (or predisciplinary?) writing and reading of texts.

Finally, as promised, a performance of the 'Phrenology' song from Broadway Musical Florodora (1899) can be found here.