Double Aulos Player and Maenad
On this Attic vase from about 470 BC we have a player of the double aulos
(an oboe-like instrument), wearing the professional costume of a musician,
a decorated tunic with long sleeves. He also wears a leather mouth-band,
which holds the double aulos in place. An aulos player typically
accompanied choral songs in tragedy. In front of him is a Maenad,
who has just participated in the Dionysiac ritual of tearing apart an animal,
in this case a deer and holds a bleeding leg. She differs from most
maenads on vases in her hairstyle, which goes straight up from her forehead
and is arranged stiffly around her shoulders and neck. Because hair
in this period was usually arranged much more naturally, the artist may
have intended his audience to understand that this hair is the wig of a
mask. Therefore this would be a depiction of a maenad as a member
of a tragic chorus dancing to the music of the double aulos player.
There is one problem. The naked breasts of this maenad obviously
indicate a female chorus member and, of course, in drama men portray all
roles. This, however, need not trouble us, because the artist is
probably exercising artistic license. In painting, a male chorus
member representing a woman could be depicted as a real woman. This
painting dates from the time of Aeschylus, who wrote at least two plays
on Dionysiac themes: The Bacchae and The Bassarae, so the
painting could be a reference to one of these plays.
It should be noted that the playwright was a composer as well as a poet.
Almost no music has survived from the fifth century except for two fragments
from choruses of Euripides. The performance of songs (words and music)
was originally the province of the chorus, but gradually poets began to
write songs for actors, while diminishing the role of the chorus. The alternation
of dialogue and song is characteristic of most Greek tragedies. Although
exceptions can be found, choral songs generally acted as dividers between
scenes of dialogue.
Next
section.
Back
to Table of Contents.