(b Eleusis [now Elevsina], 525 bce; d Gela [now Terranuova], Sicily, 456 bce). Greek tragic poet. He wrote about 80 dramas, tragedies and satyr plays, of which eight, all tragedies, have survived.
Probably the earliest of Aeschylus’s plays was the Persians (472 bce), which celebrated the Greek victory over vast invading forces led by Xerxes; set at the Persian court, the play is one long lament. With one exception (the singing of a paean by the Greeks, 393), the references to music emphasize the tone of mourning: ‘there resounds a song unlike that of victory’ (kelados ou paiōnios, 605). The hymns of the Persians are directed to the dead (619–20, 625) and their singing is a cry of pain (1043, iuze melos). In the remarkably extended sequence of strophic lyrics with which the play closes (852–1076), the chorus speaks of the lamentation of a Mariandynian mourner (939). The scholiast on this line referred to a saying about playing on Mariandynian auloi, famous for the playing of dirges, in the Iastian (or Ionian) mode; the resulting problem of modal ethos remains unresolved.
The Seven against Thebes (467 bce) chronicles the doomed attackers at the city’s seven gates and the deaths of two brothers in civil war; hence the women must sing a ‘loathsome paean’ (870), a paradoxical phrase.
In the Suppliant Maidens (?463 bce) the daughters of Danaus, who have taken refuge in Argos from insistent suitors, form the chorus. Distraught, they speak of themselves (69; cf scholium on Persians, 939) as ‘fond of grieving in Ionian patterns of melody’, high-pitched songs suited to lamentation (112–16), and of Ares as ‘without dance, without lyre’ (681, achoron, akitharin). Once assured of protection, they sing hopefully of a blessed Argos, a place of singers before the altars and of ‘song that loves the lyre’ (694–7). The Oresteia (458 bce), the only extant trilogy, contains more references: there is a notable long interchange (kommos) between the chorus and the frenzied Cassandra in the Agamemnon, and the following plays contain two choral passages: the savage invocation of the dead Agamemnon and the ‘binding hymn’ (desmios hymnos) of the Erinyes, who, as benevolent powers, are escorted from the stage in a joyous closing processional. The references are always appropriate in mood to their dramatic context and Aeschylus’s chief concern in making them was to establish a contrast or paradox. The celebrated refrain of the opening chorus of the Agamemnon is an example: ‘Sing sorrow, sorrow: but good win out in the end’ (121, 159, trans. R. Lattimore, Chicago, 1953/R; on ailinon, see Linus). The songs mentioned in the trilogy are almost all sorrowful or give way to laments, until the downward movement is reversed and the Eumenides ends with the triumphant singing of the processional.
Throughout the Oresteia auloi are unmentioned; the lyra is noted only as having no part in the real or imagined hymn of the Erinyes (Agamemnon, 990, akitharin; Eumenides, 332–3, aphormingtos). There are repeated mentions, however, of the ritual forms of song, paean, dirge, nomos and hymn; these are not mere repetitions but are enriched and made individual by their contexts.
The treatment of music elsewhere in Aeschylus’s work corresponds to that in the Oresteia. None of the basic terms for the reed pipes or the lyre (aulos, kithara, lyra, phorminx) occurs, and when any of them appears in a compound term or in a phrase, the usual effect is paradoxical or ironical; philophorminx (Suppliant Maidens, 697, noted above) is an exception.
Nothing is definitely known about performing practice of music in Aeschylus’s plays (see Euripides).
See also Aristophanes and Greece, §I.
Of the surviving tragedies, the Seven against Thebes and the Persians have not provided opera texts. Early opera generally avoided the craggy splendour of Aeschylus, perhaps concurring with Quintilian's view that he was uncouth. The Suppliant Maidens was used by Metastasio for his libretto Ipermestra (1744), set by some 30 composers, and Salieri took a French translation of a Calzabigi text for Les Danaïdes (1784). Some doubt has been cast on the authenticity of Prometheus, but the play has been the basis for operas by Fauré (1900), Emmanuel (composed 1916–18), Cortese (1951) and Orff (1968). The Suppliant Maidens has inspired Emmanuel's Salamine (1929), and the three plays of the Oresteia have been used by Taneyev (1895) and Weingartner (1902). Cuclin founded his Agamemnon (composed 1922) on the trilogy, as did Pizzetti his Clitennestra (1965) and J.C. Eaton The Cry of Clytaemnestra (1980).
A number of composers have written incidental music for sites notable for their tradition of Greek drama: Evanghelatos (Persians), Pallandios (Oresteia) and Varvoglis (Agamemnon and Persians), for Greece itself; Mulè (Choephori, 1921) and Pizzetti (Agamemnon, 1931), for the open-air theatre at Syracuse, Sicily; Stanford (Eumenides, 1885), Parry (Agamemnon, 1900), Demuth (Prometheus, 1948) and Patrick Hadley (Agamemnon, 1953), for Cambridge, England; and C.F.A. Williams (Agamemnon) for the English Bradfield College tradition.
Many French composers have turned to incidental music, among them Halévy (Prométhée enchainé, 1849), Leroux (Les Perses, 1896), Milhaud (Oresteia, composed 1913–22), Jacques Chailley (Les Perses, 1936, Agamemnon, 1947), Sauguet (Les Perses, 1940) and Honegger (Les suppliantes, 1941, Prométhée, 1946). Others producing incidental music to the plays have been Max von Schillings (Orestie, 1901), Marion Bauer (Prometheus Bound, 1930), Percival Kirby (Agamemnon) and Wilfrid Mellers (Prometheus, 1947).
Wagner-Régeny called his Prometheus (1959) a ‘Szenisches Oratorium’; orchestral works include Karl Goldmark's overture Der gefesselte Prometheus (1889), the symphonic trilogy La Orestiada of Manrique de Lara (1890), a Eumenides symphonic prologue by William Wallace (1893), and Luigi Cortese's suite from his opera Prometeo (1947).
H.W. Smyth, ed. and trans.: Aeschylus (London and Cambridge, MA, 1922–6/R1988–92 with suppl. by H. Lloyd-Jones)
S.M. Adams: ‘Salamis Symphony: the Persae of Aeschylus’, The Phoenix: Journal of the Classical Association of Canada, suppl.i (1952), 46–54
E.T. Owen: The Harmony of Aeschylus (Toronto, 1952)
E. Moutsopoulos: ‘Une philosophie de la musique chez Eschyle’, Revue des études grecques, lxxii (1959), 18–56
J.A. Haldane: ‘Musical Themes and Imagery in Aeschylus’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, lxxxv (1965), 33–41
W.D. Anderson: Ethos and Education in Greek Music (Cambridge, MA, 1966), 54, 59ff
T.J. Fleming: ‘The Musical Nomos in Aeschylus’ Oresteia’, Classical Journal lxxii (1977), 222–33
M. Pintacuda: La musica nella tragedia greca (Cefalù, 1978), 83–125
G. Comotti: La musica nella cultura greca e romana (Turin, 1979, 2/1991; Eng. trans., 1989), 32–3
A. Barker, ed.: Greek Musical Writings, i: The Musician and his Art (Cambridge, 1984), 62–92 [translated excerpts referring to musical subjects]
W.C. Scott: Musical Design in Aeschylean Theater (Hanover, NH, 1984)
A. Riethmüller and F. Zaminer, eds.: Die Musik des Altertums (Laaber, 1989), 157–64
T.J. Mathiesen: Apollo's Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Lincoln, NE, 1999), 94–125
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN (1), ROBERT ANDERSON (2)