Improvisation in Rhapsodic Performance

Abstract

Rhapsodes have received increasing attention in recent scholarship, (1) although there has still been no attempt to organize all of the evidence into a coherent whole (2)--a task that I do not wish to undertake here. Instead, in this essay I aim to continue a line of exploration concerning the performance of rhapsodes which has been hampered by an ancient and modern prejudice against their abilities. (3) To facilitate this, I shall reexamine the major evidence for how rhapsodes might actually have performed, using testimonia from etymology, inscriptions, the so-called Panathenaiac Rule, as well as a few unexpected sources like the Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi (which formed part of Alcidamas' Mouseion). This evidence will show not only that rhapsodes were not mere reduplicative reciters of Homeric epic, but that they were quite active improvisers of it as well. Finally, I will stress that the technical features of their improvisation, several of which I aim to demonstrate, cannot be understood apart from the competitive context in which they performed. (4) Nearly fifty years ago, Raphael Sealey cautioned his readers that in regard to the Homeridae, the fifth-century clan from Chios who at one time claimed exclusive descent from Homer, the distinction that has been drawn ... between a poet and a mere reciter is one that must be handled with care; doubtless there were men at some time in Greece who did both things. They composed poems of their own and they recited poems that they had learned from other poets; as reciters they may have modified the poems that they learned by introducing much of their own. Nevertheless it is possible to identify the extremes of the distinction. (315) For Sealey, and many scholars before and after him, Phemios and Demodokos in the Odyssey represent the poets (aoidoi) who compose while they perform, while Ion, the rhapsode (rhapsoidos) featured in Plato's dialogue by that name, represents the opposite extreme of the largely recitational performer. The case for creativity among rhapsodes is not made easier by the prejudices of Plato (as evidenced in the Ion) or Xenophon, who ranks them among the stupidest of men (Symp. 3.6; Mem. 4.2.10). In the eyes of Plato and Xenophon, although rhapsodes may recite Homer's words correctly, they simply do not know what they mean. As Plato in particular argues (Ion 533d-36c), since rhapsodes are, like poets themselves, only divinely inspired vehicles of poetry and are not strictly speaking practitioners of an art (tekhne), their entire activity is derivative and therefore devoid of any original intellectual content. Implicitly then for Plato, rhapsodes cannot create or elaborate verses within performance. Such a hostile and rationalizing assessment, however, is not commensurate with the widespread evidence for public interest in rhapsodic performance attested from the sixth century B.C.E.. down to the third century C.E. (5) This evidence surely bespeaks the popularity of rhapsoidia as a mode of live performance, (6) and it is the hold of this type of competitive performance over the imagination of the Greeks which we should seek to explain. Although we cannot be sure that all performances by rhapsodes were competitive, we can be certain that the major contests, such as those at the Panathenaia and at Sikyon, were indeed competitive. (7) Why, to put it simply, were rhapsodic performances so engaging? One answer, in my view, is that the damning opinions of Plato and Xenophon have undervalued what must have been a great deal of creative improvisation in rhapsodic performance. (8) While we cannot know for certain how much improvisation occurred in the performance of Homeric poetry before canonization of the texts , we certainly know, through the citation of verses in fourth-century authors as well as in the Ptolemaic papyri, that subsequent improvisation continued for centuries after canonization. Such improvisation, I will argue, allowed for varying degrees of competitive spontaneity and elaboration in performance against the backdrop of a known body of poetry. …

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