A seminar and discussion about material religion and sound.
This online event will include talks by Dr Angela Bellia and Dr Erica Angliker.
Register via Eventbrite to receive further details and joining instructions.
Talk titles and abstracts
Music, Memory, and Soundscape at the Sanctuaries of Apollo on Delos, Paros, and Despotiko - Erica Angliker
Music was of paramount importance in a wide range of religious activities at ancient Greek sanctuaries. As a prestigious offering to the gods, it was considered equivalent to costly dedications. Though scholars have long studied ancient Greek music and choral performances, only recently has attention turned to the physical context for this music with analyses of the sonic qualities of the places in which the performances took place. This paper draws on recent theoretical frameworks developed in music and dance studies to reconstruct the soundscapes at the major sanctuaries of Apollo on the Cycladic Islands of Delos, Paros, and Despotiko. Besides looking at the physical spaces for performances of music and dance, the analysis presented here also integrates the evidence of votives and inscriptions as well as mythology into the effort to recreate the sonic experience. A comparison of the soundscapes of the three sites sheds further light on the role of music in the cults of Apollo.
Cultic Soundmarks in Sacred Spaces in Magna Graecia - Angela Bellia
Research on architectural settings in Magna Graecia has provided extensive documentation of human behaviour and commentary on the practices of ritual, relying on images, votive objects, inscriptions, and literary sources, but rarely including exploration of the function of sound in the sacred sphere. In this paper, sacred spaces will be investigated as places based on their physical structures – and the way musicians and dancers interacted with their audiences in those structures – in order to understand how sonic events and ritualised movements performed in these settings contributed to the complex relationship between sacred spaces, the environment and social interactions.
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