Greek poet. He is thought to have lived during the 8th century bce, in various coastal cities of Ionia.
The two great epic poems ascribed to Homer clearly indicate that some kind of singing originally constituted their normal method of performance. Throughout the entire classical period from at least the time of Hesiod onwards, the Homeric poems themselves were recited, not sung. Their vocabulary includes neither kithara nor lyra; to designate the massive four-stringed lyre shown in early vase paintings, the term phorminx is regularly used. Auloi, which are mentioned only twice (Iliad, x.13; xviii.495), had apparently not yet become accepted on the Greek mainland.
The role given to music in the Iliad is very different from that given in the companion poem, the Odyssey. Performers and audiences are quite simply absent: professionalism has either not yet appeared or not been allowed a place within the epic. The term aoidos, used frequently throughout the Odyssey as ‘bard’, occurs rarely in the Iliad (see Aoidos). There it clearly means ‘singer’, with the specific sense of ‘mourner’. In every case, the characters of the Iliad make their own music. Thus when Odysseus and the other envoys come to Achilles’ tent, they find him singing to his own lyre accompaniment (ix.186–9). Since the musical activity of the Iliad is normally communal, his behaviour on this occasion may reflect his profound sense of alienation. In its musical significance, one of the most important passages in the Iliad is the description of the ‘Shield of Achilles’ (xviii.478–607), fashioned by Hephaestus at Thetis’s request for her son, Achilles. On the shield were depicted the singing of a hymenaios, a solo singer with a dancing chorus, other types of dances, and musical instruments such as the aulos and phorminx. This section of the Iliad provided the model for the Hesiodic ‘Shield of Heracles’ (see Hesiod).
The Odyssey, by contrast, may be called the bard’s poem. Now the singer of tales appears as a specialist; the term dēmioergos marks him as such, setting him apart. He is an awesome figure, to be treated with deference. Still, he has become a professional, and now a theme for singing may be suggested by his hearers or even objected to – an unthinkable occurrence within the Iliad’s world of musical values. The bard nevertheless is very generally held in honour; the epithet theios (‘god-like’) regularly attaches to him. He himself maintains that he has learnt his art from no mortal teacher; he is self-taught and performs under divine inspiration (xxii.347–8). Listeners may be so profoundly moved by his powers that they reveal their secret feelings, as Odysseus does when he hears the bard Demodocus (viii.84–92). The affective force of vocal music in other contexts always receives recognition from Homer; his Sirens employ song as a fatal lure; the enchantress Circe is a singer. Finally, there is the poet’s awareness (e.g. in Iliad, ix.186; Odyssey, viii.580) that through the fame of sung words men may live on after death.
The characters of the Iliad form the staple of Greek tragedy, and Aeschylus is said to have described his own plays as ‘slices from the great banquet of Homer’. The Iliad, however, dealing with the end of the Trojan War, has proved less attractive to musicians than the Odyssey, which treats of the return to Ithaca of Odysseus (Ulysses). The most ambitious project to involve both epics has been August Bungert's plan for nine Homerische Welt operas, five concerning the Iliad and four the Odyssey. Only Achilleus and Klytämnestra were completed for the former set; the latter became Die Odyssee (1898–1903), comprising the separate Kirke, Nausikaa, Odysseus' Heimkehr, Odysseus' Tod. More modest have been the Homerische Symphonie of Lodewijk Mortelmans (1896–8) and a dance opera of the same title by Theodor Berger (1948).
Further operas inspired by the Iliad include José Nebra's Antes que celos … y Aquiles en Troya (1747), the Penthesilea by Schoeck (1927) and King Priam of Tippett (1962). Concert works derived from the Iliad have been Bruch's choral Achilleus (1885), an overture Hector and Andromache by Henry Hadley (1894), no.1 (‘Hector's Farewell to Andromache’) and no.4 (‘Achilles Goes forth to Battle’) of Morning Heroes by Bliss (1930), and The Iliad of Dimitrios Levidis (1942–3) for narrator, tenor and orchestra.
The Odyssey, with the faithful Penelope at its core, and the wondrous adventures befalling the hero and his son Telemachus, has provided the basis for many operas. Among them are Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640), Il ritorno d'Ulisse of Jacopo Melani (1669), Circe and Penelope by Reinhard Keiser (1696, first and second parts of an Odysseus opera), the Ulysse of J.-F. Rebel (1703), Galuppi's Penelope (1741), Telemaco by Gluck (1765), L'isola di Calipso (1775) and Gli errori di Telemaco (1776) of Gazzaniga, Paer's Circe (1792), the Pénélope of Fauré (1913), The Return of Odysseus by Gundry (1940), an Odysseus by Hermann Reutter (1942), Circe of Egk (1948, revised as 17 Tage und 4 Minuten, 1966), and Ulysses by Michaelides (1951), who also wrote a Nausicaa ballet (1950).
Among concert works inspired by the Odyssey are the Syrens' Song to Ulysses by Benjamin Cooke (c1784), Bruch's choral work Odysseus (1872), an Odysseus symphony of Herzogenberg (1876), Zandonai's choral Il ritorno di Odisseo (1900–01), the prelude-cantata Iz Gomera (‘From Homer’) by Rimsky-Korsakov (1901), Guido Guerrini's symphonic poem L'ultimo viaggio d'Odisseo (1921), the choral triptyque Ulysse et les Sirènes by Roger-Ducasse (1937), the Odysseus choral symphony of Armstrong Gibbs (1937–8), Jean Louël's cantata De vaart van Ulysses (1943), Impressions from the Odyssey for violin and piano by Frederick Jacobi (1945), and the epic symphony Ulysses and Nausicaa by Loris Margaritis.
H. Guhrauer: Musikgeschichtliches aus Homer (Lauban, 1886)
W. Leaf, ed.: The Iliad (London and New York, 1886–8, 2/1900–02/R)
C.M. Bowra: Tradition and Design in the Iliad (Oxford, 1930/R)
W.B. Stanford, ed.: The Odyssey of Homer (London and New York, 1947–8, 2/1958–9/R)
H.L. Lorimer: Homer and the Monuments (London, 1950)
G.S. Kirk: The Songs of Homer (Cambridge, 1962)
A.J.B. Wace and F.H. Stubbings, eds.: A Companion to Homer (Cambridge, 1963)
M. Wegner: Musik und Tanz (Göttingen, 1968)
C.M. Bowra: Homer (New York, 1972)
J.M. Snyder: ‘The Web of Song: Weaving Imagery in Homer and the Lyric Poets’, Classical Journal, lxxvi (1981), 193–6
M.L. West: ‘The Singing of Homer and the Modes of Early Greek Music’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, ci (1981), 113–29
A. Barker, ed.: Greek Musical Writings, i: The Musician and his Art (Cambridge, 1984), 18–32 [translated excerpts referring to musical subjects]
G. Danek: ‘“Singing Homer”: Überlegungen zu Sprechintonation und Epengesang’, Wiener humanistische Blätter, xxxi (1989), 1–15
W.D. Anderson: Music and Musicians in Ancient Greece (Ithaca, NY, 1994), 27–57
For further bibliography see Greece, §I.
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN (1), ROBERT ANDERSON (2)