Deborah Steiner (Professor, Columbia University, Department of Classics)
At the outset of Olympian 7, Pindar figures the ode currently being performed to the sound of the ‘sweet-singing phorminx and the many-voiced equipment of the pipes’ as an all-gold phiale ‘plashing within with the dew of the vine’ (1-12); on a second occasion, the poetic voice addresses his chorodidaskalos as a ‘sweet krater of loudly-sounding songs’ (Ol. 6.91). This paper proposes that we take these equations between songs and cups or bowls at the most literal level: as my exploration of vessels, some depicted on painted pottery, others still extant or attested in the archaeological record, aims to demonstrate, early Greek artists and craftsmen created a series of manufactured goods that through their materiality, their functions and modes of deployment, and their iconography invited viewers and users to perceive them as sounding objects, artefacts endowed with music- and song-making powers largely independent of human agency. A close scrutiny of cups, bowls, cauldrons, and other containers together with texts describing these, I suggest, permits us to discern their musical emissions, vocal and instrumental both, and alerts us to the ways in which music was conceived while even prompting us to recreate something of its lost sonorities. Methodologically, my investigation of the materialization or embodiment of sound, music, and song in crafted/painted form engages with recent areas of inquiry, and most centrally with ‘new materialism’ and ‘posthumanism’ (see Gaifman and Platt 2018, Purves 2015); in positing the ontological fluidity between humans and things, these approaches allow the restoration of voice to the inanimate and pose the question of what these vociferous artefacts might sound like in performance.
In the first of the paper’s three parts, I focus on the bronze protome cauldrons that first appeared as objects of dedication from ca. 700 on. Exploring the metal used to cast these opulent goods, their votive role and iconography, and aligning them with the myths, rituals, and poetic texts endowing tripod cauldrons with harmonic capacities, I suggest that the objects’ viewers would understand them as emitters of music and song, both characterized by the particular properties assigned to bronze instruments and voices (see Ebbinghaus 2014, Power 2011). As votives at sanctuaries and shrines, these objects would additionally contribute to the already rich sonic ambience of the sites. The paper’s second section turns to vessels designed for pouring liquids, whether hydriae, libation bowls, or pitchers. With their sirens, cicadas, and other figural attachments, these embodied objects not only suggest their possession of resonant and vocalizing qualities, but sometimes do so in ways that trope the action of vessel user who pours out its liquid contents. The final discussion chiefly concerns cups used to play the sympotic game of kottabos; investigating artists’ frequent pairing of these kylixes with musical instruments, and reading these visual accounts against texts that highlight the links between the players’ actions and those of musicians, I suggest that vase-painters cue us into the instrumental, tuneful nature of the vessels, some additionally inscribed with the words that they ‘sing’.