Word: choric
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...done. For a proper understanding of the Oresteia not one strophe of those choric odes can be left out. From the plot action alone, the audience might suppose itself to be watching a rather unpleasant melodrama. The poet is intent that we know what profound issues are at stake. These odes are further remarkable in that they presuppose an Athenian audience able to grasp their content at a first hearing. If, not what would have been the point of composing them...
...complained that Aeschylus stops his show four times early in its first act to insert a choric ode? It is likewise complained that the external action of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde all but stops in the second act, and does stop in the third. Yet if one understands what is going on in Wagner's orchestra, Tristanfrom beginning to end is a blaze of emotional excitement; and if one understands what is going on in the orchestra ("dancing-place" of the Chorus) in the Agamemnon, the blaze of intellectual excitement is almost unbearable... As if Beethoven, a poet...