Professor Anna Boshnakova Publishes on Music and Attic Vases
By: Anna Boshnakova
“Attic Vases with Implied Melodies” in Music in Art: International Journal for Music Iconography (XLIX/1-2, 2024)
For years, I have explored the musical literacy of professional musicians in Classical Greece, with Attic vases serving as a key source of evidence for early notation practices—especially since no musical papyri from before the 3rd century BCE have survived. These vases, silent yet expressive witnesses to ancient culture, offer valuable insights into how music was visualized. The article, Attic Vases with Implied Melodies, now published in Music in Art: International Journal for Music Iconography (XLIX/1-2, 2024, pp. 37–86), presents the first comprehensive classification of Attic vases featuring inscriptions that convey melody. This study introduces the Attic Vases with Implied Melodies (AVIM) collection, tracing a unique artistic trend from the late 6th to the mid-4th century BCE. It examines how vase painters skillfully integrated music-related imagery with inscriptions that mimic melodies—through meaningful words, repetitive syllables, onomatopoeia, or seemingly nonsensical combinations of letters that resemble musical notation.
The AVIM Collection comprises fifty-two vases attributed to thirty-seven painters, divided into two distinct groups with categories. Class A vases feature implied melodies associated with singing accompanied by musical instruments, while Class B includes vases with implied melodies represented by onomatopoeia and faux musical notation.
A key aspect of the research is the distinction between musical and literary papyri as depicted in vase paintings. Literary texts were typically recorded on larger, vertically oriented bookrolls (Fig. 1), while musical texts appear to have been written on small, narrower, and horizontally oriented rolls (Fig. 2).
The existence of small, narrow papyrus rolls used by musicians is confirmed by archaeological material. The archaeological findings excavated from the tomb of the musician in Daphne outside Athens (dating to the 430s BCE) contain all accessories and equipment that professional musicians relied upon at the time, including a papyrus roll. The estimated size of the original papyrus roll from the tomb of the musician in Daphne is very narrow, 12 cm in height and 3 cm in diameter. Excellent parallels are the depictions of narrow rolls on the twelve vases from Class B, Category IV, ten of which are approximately from the same period. This is undeniable proof of what ancient Greek painters could observe as a musical reality. They were highly attuned to the world around them, striving to capture details with striking accuracy. The Roman author Gaius Plinius Secundus, better known as Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (35.36), recounts stories of master painters from the Classical and Hellenistic periods, illustrating that the primary goal of these artists was to achieve as much realism as possible. For instance, Zeuxis painted grapes so lifelike that birds attempted to peck at them, while Parrhasius tricked a fellow artist with a painted curtain. The painter Apelles was famous for his daily practice to refine his technique, valuing public critique. According to Pliny, once he had completed a work, he displayed it in a public place where passers-by could view it. He would then hide behind the painting, listening to the criticisms directed at it, believing that the judgment of the public was more discerning than his own. Under these circumstances, it is said that a shoemaker once criticized him for having depicted shoes with one shoelace too short. The following day, the shoemaker, pleased to see his correction made, began to critique the leg. At this, Apelles, indignant, popped his head out from behind the painting and reminded him that a shoemaker should only comment on the shoes—a phrase that has since become a proverb.
In the past, with no cameras to capture everyday life, people relied on painters to represent the world around them. Artists strove to make their depictions as recognizable as possible, translating the observed reality into visual compositions that preserved the essence of their time. Thus, the depiction of narrow papyrus rolls is not a mistake or an imprecise representation of bookrolls. There is no doubt that painters were aware of the appearance of typical literary papyri. A good example is the red-figure kylix from 440 BCE (Berlin, Antikensammlung, 2549), where the painter deliberately contrasts a standard-size bookroll with a narrow bookroll (Fig. 3), highlighting the distinct functions of these two types of bookrolls—one containing literary text and the other musical notation, a clear indirect evidence of music notation practices.
The use of narrow-format papyrus rolls for musical notation persisted for centuries, eventually evolving into landscape-oriented music manuscripts that became the standard for recording compositions. These small but significant clues preserved in vase paintings offer a glimpse into music culture in Classical Athens as a complex fusion of oral and written musical traditions.
Richly illustrated and interdisciplinary in scope, this article uncovers how Attic vase painters visualized the intangible essence of melody, representing both the tangible elements of music-making and the abstract nature of music. In times of war, political upheaval, and even the devastating plague that struck Athens during the Peloponnesian War, these painters continued to innovate—capturing in clay what words alone could not express.
The preliminary studies were presented at the International Conference held at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Museo Arqueológico Nacional de Madrid (April 28–29, 2022) and at the 12th Symposium of the International Study Group on Music Archaeology (September 25–29, 2023) in Würzburg, Germany. These scholarly activities were made possible with the support of Professional Development Funding from the Centre for People and Organizational Development and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Conference Speakers Fund at Sheridan College.
