CLASSICS COLLOQUIUM

Greek choral music of the 5th century is generally arranged in paired stanzas with a repeated metrical pattern, but there is scanty evidence for whether music and dance were likewise repeated between stanzas. In this paper, I examine the choral odes of Sophocles' Trachiniae in light of ancient sources on music and dance. I suggest that the text itself provides significant evidence of larger strophic responsion, both in the patterning of (choreographic?) images, and in the precise correspondence of pitch accents in key passages. My talk will be illustrated with video clips from the production of Trachiniae I recently directed at Barnard/Columbia.