“The
Musician’s Life”
by
Dr. Nikolaos Xanthoulis
Sunday,
November 12 at 2:00 pm at the Penn Museum
Reception
to follow
Free
and open to the public
In
1935 four wooden votive paintings
were discovered inside a deep cave near the village of Pitsa in
Greece and are now exhibited in the Greek National Archaeological Museum; they are the earliest surviving examples of Greek panel
painting, dated to 540-530 BC. In his lecture, Dr. Nikolaus Xanthoulis will
examine a painting that depicts a sacrificial procession to the nymphs that includes
musicians playing the lyre and aulos (a reed pipe). Dr. Xanthoulis will examine the details of the musicians and their instruments, and the significance of the symbolic naming of the women that
participate in the procession. After the lecture,
Dr. Xanthoulis will present a small concert with poems of the 6th
century BC set in music by him to ancient Greek prosody, and accompanied by a
seven-chord ancient Greek lyre replica (the same type of lyre as depicted in
the painting)
Nikolaus
Xanthoulis is with the Greek National Opera, and has served as Music Researcher
with the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, and as Artistic Director of
the Orchestras and Choir of Greek Public Radio & Television. He holds
his degrees from the Sofia Music Academy (Ph.D.), the Panteion University of
Athens, and the Athens and Athenaeum Conservatories. His fields of
research are the music of ancient Greece, the ancient Greek trumpet (Salpinx)
and lyre, and the performance of ancient Greek lyric songs; his current project
is the revival of the ancient Greek lyre and ancient Greek culture.
The lecture will take place at the Penn Museum on Sunday,
November 12, 2017. It will begin at 2:00 PM, followed by a reception, and
is free and open to the public; please use the Kress Entrance on
the east side of the Museum when entering.
The lecture
is part of the Archaeological Institute of America’s National Lecture Program,
and funding for it has been provided by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in New York, which strives to support
the work of scholars in the fields of ancient art.
