Sophocles [Sophoklēs]

(b Colonus, nr Athens, c496 bce; d 406 bce). Greek tragic poet.

1. Sophocles and music.

According to an anonymous Life (Pearson, 1917), he received a thorough traditional training in gumnastikē (rhythmic, often dance-like exercises), and mousikē (poetry with accompanying music), in which the celebrated Lamprus was his teacher (see Education, classical, and Paideia). At 16, an unusually apt pupil, he was chosen to lead the choral paean that celebrated the defeat of the Persians at Salamis (480 bce). When he entered the tragic competitions in 468 bce he defeated Aeschylus. Of more than 100 tragedies and satyr plays, only seven tragedies have survived intact, and a considerable portion of a satyr play, the Trackers; the tragedies date from the last 35 to 40 years of his life. It must have been much earlier in his career that he played the kithara in the production of the Thamyras and, consequently, was depicted with a kithara in the Stoa Poikile, the ‘Painted Porch’ at Athens (Life, 5): the Stoa was completed in or soon after 460 ce. The weakness of his voice (mikrophōnia) caused Sophocles to abandon his appearances as an actor (Life, 4). Sophocles’ kithara playing, noted as exceptional by the author of the Life, was probably uncharacteristic in stage practice at that time. The Byzantine treatise On Tragedy, 5 and 12 (ed. Browning), however, regards the use of the kithara in tragedy as a characteristic of the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides. The treatise also attributes to Sophocles the first use of the Lydian and Phrygian tonoi (the latter used ‘dithyrambically’) in tragedy.

Throughout the seven extant tragedies, the scattered references to music bear markedly less symbolic weight than the references in the plays of Aeschylus. They occur almost invariably in choral or monodic lyric; two exceptions are Creon’s contemptuous comment on the futility of songs to ward off death (Antigone, 883: aoidas) and Electra’s description of how Clytemnestra celebrates the anniversary of her husband’s murder with singing and dancing (Electra, 280: chorous).

In the Ajax, the earliest surviving play (probably before 441 bce), Ajax has suffered unendurable shame; the chorus asserts that his mother’s mourning will be no nightingale’s lament but a scream of ‘ailinon ailinon’ and the high-pitched singing of dirges (627–31; thrēnēsei, ‘she will sing a thrēnos’). Before long the chorus, typically imperceptive, has come to hope that a happy outcome may be possible after all. It cries out joyously to Pan as choropoios, ‘maker of dances’ that are ‘self-taught’ (698, 700: autodaē; cf Odyssey, xxii.347: autodidaktos). Here Pan is the rustic equivalent of Apollo Mousagētēs among the Olympians.

Musical references in the other surviving plays similarly express sorrow or ill-founded joy. In the Antigone (441 or 442 bce) Sophocles speaks of the Muses as ‘fond of the aulos’ and associates them with Dionysus (955–65); more than 80 years later, Plato declared musical consciousness to be a gift from ‘the Muses, Apollo and Dionysus’ (Laws, ii.672c8–d3). The choral climax of the Antigone is a brilliant hyporcheme (huporchēma, dance-song, 1115–52), astonishing even for Sophocles, in honour of Dionysus, who is invoked as chorag’ astrōn, ‘leader [literally ‘chorus-leader’] of the choir of stars’ (1146). The Oedipus tyrannus (c430 bce) has one passage that illustrates the importance of choral songs in Greek life. The chorus, now suspicious of Oedipus and musing on bold and godless acts, cries out: ‘If such deeds are in honour, wherefore should we join in the sacred dance?’, that is, ‘why maintain the solemn rites of public worship?’ (895–6, trans. Jebb). The sacred choroi referred to here in choreuein represent, for Sophocles, the heart of Greek religious observance.

The music of the panpipe in the Philoctetes (409 bce; 213, molpan suringos) serves only as a contrast with the wounded hero’s cries of pain. The Women of Trachis (possibly as early as 430 bce) has a remarkable statement (216–17) by the chorus: ‘and I will not disdain the aulos, O master [tyranne] of my soul’; the vocative phrase must refer to the aulos, which is here associated with the wild Bacchanalian dance to express the chorus’s feelings of joy.

The Oedipus at Colonus (401 bce; posthumously produced) contains a famous ode to Colonus, ‘where the clear-voiced nightingale sings constantly’ and ‘choirs of Muses’ love to come (671–2, 691).

The extensive fragments (see especially Pearson, frags.238–45, from the Thamyras) show that Sophocles could deal with technical details as knowledgeably as any Hellenic poet; however, the material is too diverse and complex to be summarized without thorough examination. (On the actual use which Sophocles may have made of musical accompaniment, see Euripides, §1.) In general, the references to music in Sophocles are used to strengthen the emotional impact of a scene and to heighten the dramatic contrasts of the plot.

2. Later treatments.

The three ‘Theban’ plays of Sophocles, Oedipus tyrannus, Oedipus at Colonus and the Antigone, are his only surviving trilogy, though originally presented at separate festivals of the Great Dionysia. All have inspired memorable music. The compelling power of Oedipus tyrannus, with its close-wrought plot, and a tragic heroine such as Antigone have appealed greatly to opera librettists and composers. The Electra has offered similar inspiration, whereas the remaining three tragedies and the satyric Trackers (Ichneutae) have been the source mainly of incidental music, with the notable exception of Handel’s Hercules drama based on The Women of Trachis.

WORKS BASED ON SOPHOCLES’ PLAYS

(selective list)

operas

semi-dramatic, choral, solo vocal, orchestral, instrumental

WRITINGS

A. Nauck, ed.: Tragicorum graecorum fragmenta (Leipzig, 1856, 2/1889/R1964 with suppl. by B. Snell), 134–357

R.C. Jebb, ed. and trans.: Sophocles: the Plays and Fragments (Cambridge, 1883–96/R) [for Fragments, see Pearson]

A.C. Pearson, ed.: The Fragments of Sophocles (Cambridge, 1917/R), i, 13–269; ii, 55–326; iii, 16–124

A.C. Pearson, ed.: Sophoclis fabulae (Oxford, 1924/R)

J.C. Kamerbeek, ed.: The Plays of Sophocles (Leiden, 1953–)

D. Grene and R. Lattimore, eds.: The Complete Greek Tragedies, ii: Sophocles (Chicago and London, 1959)

T.B.L. Webster, ed.: Sophocles: Philoctetes (Cambridge, 1970)

J.H. Kells, ed.: Sophocles: Electra (Cambridge, 1973)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

K. Rupprecht: ‘Sophokles als kitharistēs’, Philologus, lxxv (1920), 213–15

L. Roussel: ‘Bel canto et Sophocle’, Mélanges offerts à M. Octave Navarre (Toulouse, 1935), 371–4

E. Moutsopoulos: ‘Sophocle et la philosophie de la musique’, Annales de la faculté des lettres et sciences humaines d’Aix, xxxiii (1959), 107–38

R. Browning: ‘A Byzantine Treatise on Tragedy’, Geras: Studies Presented to George Thomson on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday, ed. L. Varcl and R.F. Willetts (Prague, 1963), 67–81

J.A. Haldane: ‘Musical Themes and Imagery in Aeschylus’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, lxxxv (1965), 33–41

A.D. Trendall and T.B.L. Webster: Illustrations of Greek Drama (London, 1971), 69–70

M. Pintacuda: La musica nella tragedia greca (Cefalù, 1978), 127–55

L. Richter: ‘Instrumentalbegleitung zur attischen Tragödie’, Das Altertum, xxiv (1978), 150–59

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)