Divine Music in Archaic and Classical Greek Art: Seeing the Songs of the Gods

In this volume, Carolyn M. Laferrière examines Athenian vase-paintings and reliefs depicting the gods most frequently shown as musicians to reconstruct how images suggest the sounds of the music the gods made. Incorporating insights from recent work in sensory studies, she considers formal analysis together with literary and archaeological evidence to explore the musical culture of Athens. Laferrière argues that images could visually suggest the sounds of the gods' music. This representational strategy, whereby sight and sound are blurred, conveys the 'unhearable' nature of their music: because it cannot be physically heard, it falls to the human imagination to provide its sounds and awaken viewers' multisensory engagement with the images. Moreover, when situated within their likely original contexts, the objects establish a network of interaction between the viewer, the visualized music, and the landscape, all of which determined how divine music was depicted, perceived, and reciprocated. Laferrière demonstrates that participation in the gods' musical performances offered worshippers a multisensory experience of divine presence.

在這本書中，Carolyn M. Laferrière研究了雅典的陶瓷繪畫和浮雕，描繪了最常以音樂家形象出現的神祇，以重建這些圖像如何暗示神祇所演奏的音樂聲音。她結合感官研究的最新成果，將形式分析與文學和考古證據相結合，探索雅典的音樂文化。Laferrière認為圖像可以以視覺方式暗示神祇音樂的聲音。這種表現策略將視覺和聲音模糊化，傳達了神祇音樂的「無法聽見」的特性：因為它無法在物理上被聽見，所以人類的想像力必須提供它的聲音，並喚醒觀眾對圖像的多感官參與。此外，當這些物件置於它們可能的原始背景中時，它們建立了觀眾、視覺化的音樂和景觀之間的互動網絡，這些因素決定了神祇音樂的描繪、感知和回應方式。Laferrière證明，參與神祇音樂表演為信徒提供了一種多感官的神性體驗。