Prof. Mastrangelo brought ancient Greek alive and into the theater recently at a performance of "Oedipus at Colonus in Nine Fragmentary Tableaux," a set of original incidental music for Sophocles' play Oedipus at Colonus, written by Dickinson music professor Robert Pound. The music was originally written for a 2008 production of the play. Prof. Pound re-scored it recently for the Novus Trombone Quartet, the 2013 artists in residence at Dickinson. At two recent performances of the music, Prof. Mastrangelo was called in to read Sophocles' chilling version of the curse Oedipus speaks to his son, Polyneices. Polyneices, seeking his father's blessing and allegiance in taking Thebes, is instead rebuked and cursed by Oedipus for being more concerned with his own ambition than with his blind and homeless father's well-being. The performance included not just the superb playing of Novus and the sounds of Sophocles' Greek, but also readings in English from the play by students from Prof. Karen Kirkham's Movement and Text class: Holly Kelly ('15), Lauren Brennan ('13), Jeremy Lupowitz ('15), and Christina Errico ('15), who is a Classics major. Seen here in Rubendall Recital Hall after the show are Prof. Mastrangelo (center), Michael Clayville, director of Novus (left), and Robert Pound.

 

A podcast by Classics major Dan Plekhov (’14) about chariot tactics in Homer is the number one download on Dickinson iTunesU channel, beating out even the excellent content provided by our Admissions office. Chariots appear frequently in the Iliad, Dan notes, but Homer notoriously seems to have little idea of how they would actually be used in combat. He then points out the exception, a passage that does seem to describe realistic chariot tactics, and argues that it reflects memories of Mycenaean culture, not the experience of contemporary societies of Homer’s own day. The passage is Iliad 4.297-309. Dan discusses it, gives his own translation, and reads it aloud in the original Greek. You can find it on Dickinson’s iTunesU channel via the iTunes store, or listen here while looking at the associated images:Homer