<I>La critica musicale negli </i>Uccelli<I> di Aristofane</I>

Abstract

The second half of the fifth century B.C. was a revolutionary time for developments in music. The Birds, the comedy in which Aristophanes most radically experiments with novel musical techniques, provides clear evidence for the formation of a ‘new music’. In respect to music, the most important passages of the comedy are the monodies of Tereus and Procne (v. 209ss.), with both characters (metamorphosed into the Hoopoe and the Nightingale) performing, separately, a solo, ‘a capella’ and a musical piece; and the scenes of the Poet and Cinesias (vv. 904-57 and 1372-1409), the so-called ‘Abfertigungsszenen’ in German, in which Aristophanes ridicules the new dithyramb.