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Music and Politics in the Ancient World   ,  ,            65 Music and Politics in the Ancient World , , Ricardo Eichmann Mark Howell Graeme Lawson (eds.) Eichmann / Howell / Lawson (eds.) Music and Politics in the Ancient World Ancient the in Politics and Music (eds.) Lawson / Howell / Eichmann BERLIN STUDIES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD is the outcome of an international workshop held in Berlin in June 2011, under the title Sound, Political Space and Political Condition: Exploring Sounds of Societies under Change. Focusing on the poetics of emerging music-archaeological narratives, it seeks to test assertions made by writers of the 5th to 3rd centuries BCE that political change is refl ected in music. It asks whether politics’ footprint might be discerned in surviv- ing records of music and sound – thereby serving as a marker for social and political change. Taking advantage of several distinct yet complementary traditions of criti- cism which, where they overlap, make up the young and expanding fi elds of music archaeology and archaeoacous- tics, the chapters seek, in a constructive way, to disrupt old ways of visualising the archaeological past. Along the way ancient music is revealed as much more than just a form of entertainment. From a traditional preoccupa- tion with systematics, music archaeology aims to forge a broader theoretical engagement between music studies and the remote past, and to establish music’s place within the wider arena of Ancient Studies. berlin studies of 65 the ancient world berlin studies of the ancient world · 65 edited by topoi excellence cluster Music and Politics in the Ancient World exploring identity, agency, stability and change through the records of music archaeology edited by Ricardo Eichmann, Mark Howell, Graeme Lawson Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. © 2019 Edition Topoi / Exzellenzcluster Topoi der Freien Universität Berlin und der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Cover image: Left – burial of a young man with wooden lyre in situ, beneath St. Severinskirche, Cologne (Germany), 8th century CE; right – limestone statue of a man with lyre, St.-Symphorien-en-Paule, Côtes-d’Armor (Brittany), 2nd century BCE. Design concept: Stephan Fiedler Printed and distributed by PRO BUSINESS digital printing Deutschland GmbH, Berlin ISBN 978-3-9819685-3-8 ISSN (Print) 2366-6641 ISSN (Online) 2366-665X DOI 10.17171/3-65 First published 2019 Published under Creative Commons Licence CC BY-NC 3.0 DE. For the terms of use of third party content, please see the reference lists. www.edition-topoi.org CONTENTS Editors’ Preface — 7 ricardo eichmann, mark howell, graeme lawson Introduction: Music, Social Identity, Political Cohesion — 15 ingrid furniss Political and Musical Change in Early China: The Case of Chu — 35 véronique alexandre journeau Musique ancienne versus musique nouvelle dans la Chine ancienne — 63 stefan hagel Shaping Character: An Ancient Science of Musical Ethos? — 87 ralf gehler Volksmusik und Recht im frühneuzeitlichen Mecklenburg — 105 mark howell The Impact of Sound on Colonization: Spanish, French and British Encounters with Native American Cultures, from Colonial Guatemala to Virginia — 119 arnd adje both Musical Conquests: Encounters in Music Cultures of Aztec and Early Colonial Times — 145 dahlia shehata Religious Poetry and Musical Performance under King Hammurāpi of Babylon and His Successors — 159 cristina-georgeta alexandrescu Images of Music and Musicians as Indicators of Status, Wealth and Political Power on Roman Funerary Monuments — 183 alexandra von lieven Music and Political Space in Ancient Egypt — 201 graeme lawson Musical Finds and Political Meanings: Archaeological Connexions Between Lyres, Poetry and Power in Barbarian Europe — 221 eleonora rocconi ‘Greek’ versus ‘Barbarian’ Music: The Self-Definition of Hellenic Identity through the Culture of Mousikē — 281 christophe vendries Conquest, Political Space and Sound in Antiquity: Concerning Barbarians and Romans, and Roman Discourse on Music and Civilization — 297 Editors’ Preface This book is the outcome of an international workshop held in Berlin in June 2011, un- der the title Sound, Political Space and Political Condition: Exploring Sounds of Societies under Change. One of a series of musicological and music-archaeological contributions to the work of Topoi Area C-III ‘Acts’,the event took its unusual starting point from a combi- nation of several distinct yet complementary traditions of research which, where they overlap, make up the archaeology of music and its closely allied field, archaeoacoustics. In doing so it found inspiration in recent conversations of an interdisciplinary nature involving colleagues from across the humanities, the natural and life sciences, whilst at the same time drawing strength from a deepening sense of community and shared purpose in this young and expanding field of scientific-artistic endeavour. The decision to hold a workshop on such an ambitious theme arose partly in re- sponse to a perceived need to situate music archaeology more firmly within Ancient Studies as it moves forward from traditional descriptive and systematic preoccupations (the concerns of the historical musicologist and culture historian) to forge a broader theoretical engagement with the remote past. In this gradual transformation from in- trospection to scientific discipline, music archaeology finds fruitful resonances within the etiologies of our biological and cultural origins as humans, with the epistemology of ancient knowledge and with the neurological and psychological bases of human senses and behaviour as they change or persist through archaeological time. Part of our purpose in convening the meeting was to explore the poetics of emerg- ing music-archaeological narratives, not only in a metaphorical sense but in some cases literally so. Its advertised theme was to be ‘acoustical preferences, soundscapes and pub- lic expressions of music in past and present societies’,with special reference to the ways in which musical tastes might be subject to change in changing social, economic and political circumstances. Our stated aim was to explore and test the proposition that such Ricardo Eichmann, Mark Howell, Graeme Lawson (eds.) | Music and Politics in the Ancient World | Berlin Studies of the Ancient World 65 (ISBN 978-3-9819685-3-8; DOI 10.17171/3-65) | www.edition- topoi.org 7 Fig. 1 Music and political power in the third millennium BCE: remains of lyres in situ within the ‘Great Death Pit’ PG1237 of the Royal Cemetery of Ur (modern Tell el-Muqayyar, southern Iraq). Upper – the ‘Silver Lyre’; middle – body of a harp; lower – the ‘Golden Lyre’.Excavated by Leonard Woolley in 1929. Early Dynastic, ca. 2500 BCE. Scale: the yoke (or cross-bar) of the smaller ‘Silver Lyre’ is ca. 1 m in length. change might be identified in past records of music and sound, including those of arch- aeology, art and literature, and that the acoustical transformations which they embody could in turn serve as markers for a society’s political condition. Such correlation was first mooted by philosophers writing in Greece during the 5th and 4th centuries BC, most notably by Damon and Plato, and by Lü Buwei in China in the 3rd. As we shall see in the pages that follow, Lü asserts that the musical pref- erences which states exhibit can betray their political health and, by implication, may foretell their political fate. Today the evidence with which to test and explore such curi- ous notions is to be found in portrayals of musics in ancient art and literature, as well as in archaeological relics of musical instruments and in ancient acoustical spaces which together form the life-blood of music archaeology and archaeoacoustics. For those familiar with this series, Exzellenzcluster 264 Topoi needs little introduc- tion. Nevertheless, a brief resumé may be in order for the general reader, insofar as Topoi has inspired and helped shape the present volume. The principal function of the Cluster has been to bring together scholars in Berlin in a new and profoundly interdisciplinary approach to considerations of knowledge in the ancient past, with particular emphasis 8 editors’ preface Fig. 2 Emblems of power and tradition in times of political change: the site and environs of the Tintignac (Limousin) deposit of trumpets and regalia, with the excavation in progress. Central France, Gallo-Roman: be- tween the beginning of La Tène D2 (ca. 80 BCE) and the accession of Augustus (Roman emperor 27 BCE to 14 CE). on spatial issues in archaeology, ancient history and ancient geography. Divided into a number of Research Areas, in 2011 the principal objective of Area C was to explore the perception and representation of spaces of all kinds in ancient cultures, with a view to better understanding ‘how spaces, spatial relations, movements and directions are perceived and imagined, how they are represented in various media, and to what ex- tent spatial perception, experience and representation affect the knowledge of spaces’. Both across Topoi and within the specific sub-framework of Area C-III ‘Acts’, the Re- search Group ‘Musikarchäologie’ has played a significant part, contributing a number of published reports and articles, a seminar series ‘Listening to the Past’,and culminat- ing in the content and interactive design of ‘Klangräume’: three galleries on ancient sound and music within the public exhibition Jenseits
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