Greek videos

Saphho: three lyrics sung and danced by maidens (hetairai)

Uploaded by: ShakespeareAndMore
Video Description:
These are sung in ancient Greek with English subtitles.
"The poetry of Sappho...was lyric in the strictest sense: it was composed to be sung to the accompaniment of the lyre." Thus David Campbell opens his fine Loeb Classic Library edition of complete Sappho. Presented in this video clip are three Sappho lyrics, the Lobel and Page (Campbell sensibl
y maintains the same numbering in his edition) numbers 27, 30 and 1. These lyrics are sung, and in the first two cases, danced, in this video by The New York Greek Drama Company, released 1988. Andrea Goodman as Sappho.....Directed by Peter Steadman, music by Eve Beglarian. The first two songs are
for weddings.....C.R. Haines "Sappho: The Poems and Fragments" (1926, page 150) sez: "The writing of these epithalamina, or bridal songs, for friends and clients in Lesbos and elsewhere was an important and probably lucrative part of Sappho's professional work..." ............... Sappho's sente
nces, even when read on a page, have a music in themselves, joining words and sounds paced "like the onflow of a never-resting stream...giving the effect of a singular continuous utterance" (Dionysius of Halicarnassus) a bit of that art can be gleaned even by english-only readers with a translitera
tion and translation of the opening of the famous "Hymn to Aphrodite" at 4:17 in this clip: Poikilo'thron a`tha'nat Afrodita, pai Di'os, dolo'ploke, li'ssomai' se mh me a'saisi mh't oni'aisi da'mna, po'tnia, thumon. Immortal Aphrodite of the broidered throne, daughter of Zeus, weaver of wil
es, I pray thee break not my spirit with anguish and distress, O Queen (H.T. Wharton's literal translation) Glittering-throned, undying Aphrodite, Wile-weaving daughter of high Zeus, I pray thee, Tame not my soul with heavy woe, dread mistress, Nay, nor with anguish ! (J. Addington Symon
ds, 1893 translation) some notes: On Sappho's island of Lesbos, there is a 3,000 foot mountain named Olympos, after the famous home of the gods in Thessaly. Sappho called herself Psappho in her native Aiolic Greek. Yes, Demetrius Phalereus (Eloc. 167) claims the epithalamia weren't sung, but h
is opinion is based on the rather prosaic words these poems contain--not on any musical modes or metrical argument. I rather think works like this, sung for popular audiences, would inevitably contain some elements of a less elevated style. Sappho uses the word 'hetairai' in fragment 160 to descr
ibe her female companions--clearly the word does not have the 'courtesan' connotations it gets overlayed with at a later date

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