Orestes Papyrus

Musical fragment from the first stasimon of Orestes by Euripides (lines 338–344, Vienna Papyrus G 2315)

The Orestes Papyrus is a musical fragment from the first stasimon of Orestes by Euripides. The headword, Katolophyromai, means "I cry, lament so much". In 1892, among a number of papyri from Hermopolis, Egypt, in the collection of Archduke Rainer Ferdinand of Austria, a fragment was discovered and published^{[1][full citation needed]} by the papyrologist Karl Wessely, containing a mutilated passage with musical notation. Although Vienna Papyrus G 2315 dates to the third century BCE, the melody recorded on it may have been written much earlier.^[a]

Text

The full text of the musical fragment reads as follows:

κατολοφύρομαι, κατολοφύρομαι
ματέρος αἷμα σᾶς, ὅ σ’ ἀναβακχεύει,
ὁ μέγας ὄλβος οὐ μόνιμος ἐν βροτοῖς,
ἀνὰ δὲ λαῖφος ὥς τις ἀκάτου θοᾶς τινάξας δαίμων
κατέκλυσεν δεινῶν πόνων ὡς πόντου
λάβροις ὀλεθρίοισιν ἐν κύμασιν

[I cry, I cry, your mother’s blood that drives you mad, great happiness in mortals never lasting, but like a sail of a swift ship, which a god shook up and plunged it with terrible troubles into the greedy and deadly waves of sea.]

The arrangement of the fragmentary text differs from the traditional editions, in which the lines begin with ματέρος αἷμα (mother's blood) and κατολοφύρομαι appears after βροτοῖς (mortals). Unlike other fragments, however, the text and musical notations are quite well preserved.

Poetic features

The metre of the song is mainly dochmiac. The preserved vocal notes coincide with the ancient Dorian or Phrygian harmoniai transmitted by Aristides Quintilianus,^[2] the Damonian harmoniai, in enharmonic genus, which was usual in tragedy of fifth century BC.

Authorship

Whether this fragment represents the original music Euripides composed in 408 BC is an open question, given the absence of 5th century BC musical inscriptions. The fragment accords with observations by Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Aristophanes about the complexity of Euripidean style.

Footnotes

1. Mathiesen (1999) places it about 125 years after the death of Euripides, in the Augustan age.

References

1. Mitteilungen aus der Sammlung der Papyrus Erzherzog Rainer [Communications from the Papyrus Collection of Archduke Rainer] (in German). Vol. 5. part 3.
2. Barker, Andrew; Stevens, John; Huray, Peter le (1984). Greek Musical Writings: Volume 2, Harmonic and Acoustic Theory. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-61697-3. Retrieved 12 December 2022.

Further reading

• Mathiesen, T.J. (1999). Apollo's Lyre: Greek music and music theory in antiquity and the Middle Ages. pp. 116-124 – via Google.
• Euripides (1928) [1895]. "Excursus B, the musical fragment". In Wedd, N. (ed.). The Orestes of Euripides . Cambridge University Press. pp. 203-204 – via Google.

External links

• Katolophyromai: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project

External videos
Euripides - Stasimon ('Orestes')
Euripedes, "Stasimon Chorus" from Orestes (enharmonic)
Orestes Stasimon (Greek Lyre)
Coro del Orestes de Eurípides

• Performance by Daemonia Nymphe, by Petros Tabouris
• Translation of the fragment by Dr. Norman Prinsky
• The whole stasimon, lines 316 – 347 in English and Greek from Perseus Project