Chapter 2 - The Gentleman’s Lyre

Summary

The group music-making at aristocratic symposia, described in Chapter 1, developed in a sixth-century social context where ordinary people (the demos) were gaining power in ways that threatened elite claims to superiority and oligarchic right to rule. In this cultural environment, sympotic music-making by upper-class men, “gentlemanly lyrody,” served as a symbol of the superiority that elites arrogated to themselves and expected ordinary people to respect. The ability to perform a certain repertoire to self-accompaniment was a badge of social superiority. This lyrody was directly connected to the refined education that aristocratic boys received; when practiced at adult men’s symposia, it represented a display of paideia. The chapter also examines the question of whether nonelites eventually acquired the skills and repertoire of gentlemanly lyrody, which might have robbed it of its social cachet; and what happened to that cachet when increasing numbers of professional musicians came to dominate the entertainment scene, offering a popular new music for the stage that eventually entered the drinking party. The chapter also considers evidence that some elites did not participate in the sympotic musical culture of their class.