The region of western Italy occupied by the ancient Etruscans; the name is a Roman one.
4. Music in religious and social life.
GÜNTER FLEISCHHAUER
The Etruscans (Lat. Tusci, Etrusci; Gk. Turrhēnoi, Tursēnoi) were probably of east Mediterranean origin, migrating to north-west Italy in the 9th to 8th centuries bce. Modern research (Pallottino, Pfiffig etc.) suggests that they did not migrate as an ethnic unity but grew together gradually (from about the 10th century bce onwards) in central Italy from different indigenous and non-indigenous ethnic, linguistic and cultural elements as the ‘populi Etruriae’.
From the late 8th century until the 1st century bce they inhabited the fertile region of west-central Italy between the Arno and the Tiber bounded by the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Appennines, approximating to modern Tuscany. Their economy and culture were based on agriculture, fishing, hunting, metal-working in bronze, gold and iron, and trading by sea as far away as the coast of Asia Minor. They achieved their greatest territorial expansion in the 6th and 5th centuries bce, with loosely federated autonomous cities from Mantua to Capua. The focal point of their civilization was the temple of Voltumna, an Etruscan deity, situated in the region of Volsinii (Orvieto) on Lake Bolsena.
Economic crises, social struggles and repeated invasions by the Gauls in the north and the Romans in the south led to the decline of the Etruscan cities from the 4th century bce. In 396 Veii fell to the Romans, and in 264 Volsinii. By the early 1st century bce other Etruscan cities had been granted Roman civic rights; in 27 bce the whole of Etruria was finally subordinated to the administration of Caesar Augustus.
Knowledge of Etruscan musical culture derives from two principal sources, in the absence of surviving music of Etruscan origin. The first is the literary evidence of Greek and Roman authors; the second, and more important, is Etruscan painting and relief work. The subject matter of Etruscan art derives from the pictorial arts of the Greeks, but Etruscan music-making is sometimes shown; and certain features of the costumes of Etruscan musicians and dancers distinguish them from their Greek or Ionian predecessors. The details of these scenes often recur, and sometimes they agree with the evidence of Greek and Latin authors; thus general conclusions about Etruscan musical culture are possible.
The archaeological evidence, varying in date between the 6th and 1st centuries bce, is found in vase and wall paintings, reliefs on urns and sarcophagi, bronze statuettes etc. Most of it comes from Etruscan tombs and was part of the funerary cult of the nobility; nevertheless its evidence is valid. The Etruscans, like the Egyptians, long believed in a life after death, and wished to be entertained by musicians and dancers in death as they had been during their lives.
The archaeological and literary evidence indicates that the Etruscans' musical instruments (and consequently also their musical system of modes – harmoniai, modi – and melodic structures) were the same as those of the Greeks in the Archaic period (6th and 5th centuries bce); the Etruscans traded with the Greeks, in south Italy (Magna Graecia) and overseas.
Of the Greek chordophones, the Etruscans adopted the archaic phorminx (fig.1), the forerunner of the kithara, with a rounded resonator and in-curving yoke arms (Stauder, 1973), the lyre (lyra) and barbitos. The Greeks used the last two instruments primarily to accompany singing, but the Etruscans evidently preferred instrumental music alone. Wind and string players are frequently depicted accompanying male and female dancers; ensembles of trumpeters and horn players are often shown accompanying public processions (Zebinger, 1982).
Unlike the Greeks, the Etruscans particularly cultivated wind instruments. Greek authors described them as the ‘inventors’ of trumpets (Aeschylus, Eumenides, 567–8; Sophocles, Ajax, 17; scholium to Euripides, Phoenissae, 1377; Diodorus Siculus, v.40.1; Athenaeus, iv.184a; Pollux, iv.85). The trumpet used in the Mediterranean area, a short tube of bronze or iron with a small bell (salpinx, tuba), was developed by the Etruscans both as the long lituus with a hooked bell bent backwards and a removable mouthpiece (Behn, 1954), and as the hoop-shaped cornu with a transverse bar for greater ease and security in performance (fig.2; see also Wegner, MGG1). A bronze lituus, 1·6 metres long, from Caere (Cerveteri), survives (Rome, Museo Gregoriano Etrusco, room III), and a bronze cornu of Etruscan origin (Rome, Villa Giulia Museum, no.51216 in the inventory). Other Etruscan wind instruments include the panpipes (syrinx), which were widespread; the double pipes (auloi, tibiae; see Aulos and Tibia), which unlike their Greek prototypes mostly appear with conical bell-extensions on the pipes to reinforce the volume (Jannot, 1974); and, later, transverse flutes, as represented for example on an urn relief (see Flute, fig.5) of the late 2nd or early 1st century bce in the tomb of the Volumni near Perugia (Hickmann, 1952).
Percussion instruments are depicted less frequently. However, vase paintings, bronze mirrors and statuettes show that men and women often danced, singly, in pairs or in circles, to the rhythmic accompaniment of clappers (crotala) (Hill, 1940). Large decorated bronze bells were frequently used in burial rites.
Music must have occupied an important position in both public and private Etruscan life, primarily because of the funerary cult mentioned above (§2). Professional tibia players performed during the lying-in-state, sacrificial rites and magic lamentations for the dead, and string instruments were played for the processions and dances of the burial ceremonial; this is shown by a number of reliefs on urns from Chiusi dating from the Archaic period (late 6th or early 5th century bce) (Paribeni, 1938). Games and banquets were held to commemorate deceased notables, and instrumentalists and dancers performed in addition to the competing athletes (Thuillier, 1985).
Brightly coloured wall paintings from underground burial chambers near Tarquinia and Chiusi show the Etruscans' predilection for music joined with dancing, banqueting and other social occasions: these pictures were to provide the dead with the entertainment they had enjoyed while they were alive (Banti, 1960). Such banqueting scenes, with musicians and dancers of both sexes, are depicted in the Tomba delle Leonesse (c530–520 bce), the Tomba del Citaredo (c490–480 bce), and the Tomba dei Leopardi (c480–470 bce; fig.3), all near Tarquinia. Of the well-known frescoes from Tarquinia, those of the Tomba del Triclinio (c470 bce) are outstanding: six young dancing girls and two youths are shown entertaining the guests at a banquet; they are guided by a tibia player and a performer on the barbitos (possibly the dance leaders, for they participate in the dance steps). The graceful and expressive positions of legs and arms suggest that the dance was markedly rhythmical and animated. Similar emphatic gestures linked with music and dancing occurred later in some Etruscan stage performances by actor-dancers (histriones, ludiones).
Etruscan tibia players performed at armed dances and boxing matches (Athenaeus, iv.154a): the literary evidence is confirmed by a black-figure amphora of the late 6th century bce from Vulci, now in the British Museum (fig.4). They were popular as hunt-followers (Aelian, De natura animalium, xii.46), and were employed to encourage kitchen slaves in their work (Pollux, iv.56). The Etruscans' general preference for the tibia rather than string instruments contrasts them with the Greeks and reveals a taste for colourful, orgiastic music (Pallottino, 1984). Even the scourging of slaves was carried out to the sound of the tibia (Plutarch, De cohibenda ira, 11c; Athenaeus, xii.518b).
Instrumental ensembles were popular in Etruria. Marriage ceremonies, depicted in carvings on stone sarcophagi from Caere (mid-5th century bce; fig.5) and Vulci (late 4th century bce), show performers on double pipes, string instruments, a horn and a lituus, all wearing a professional uniform of long robes. Similar musical ensembles at funeral processions recur on alabaster urns from Volterra (2nd to 1st century bce). Musicians with horn and lituus are also shown mingling with the crowds at funeral processions in wall paintings in the Tomba Bruschi (3rd or 2nd century bce) and the Tomba del Tifone (mid-2nd century bce) near Tarquinia.
Musical life in Etruria embraced every section of society (Jannot, 1988). Professional musicians, professional female dancers and actor-dancers were recruited from the slaves, and the fame of the Etruscan musicians and dancers persisted even under the Romans (Wille, 1967). During an epidemic at Rome in 364 bce, Etruscan dancers were brought to Rome for propitiatory ceremonies, and they performed to their customary tibia accompaniment (Livy, vii.2.4: ‘The ludiones summoned from Etruria, dancing to the melodies of the tibia player without any singing [sine carmine ullo … ad tibicinis modos saltantes] … performed movements which were in no way unseemly, in the Etruscan manner’). The Romans used tibia players in various ways in their centuries-old cult music; these can be traced to Etruscan origins (Virgil, Georgics, ii.192–3; Ovid, Fasti, vi.653; Strabo, v.2.2). The Roman use of the tuba, lituus and cornu, mainly as military signalling instruments, was also derived from the Etruscans.
See also Greece, §I, and Rome, §I.
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SachsH
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