← more from
Carrier Records
We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Kate Soper - Missing Scenes: III. Lost Greek Tragedies

from Missing Scenes by Wet Ink Ensemble

supported by
Ken Wilson
Ken Wilson thumbnail
/

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $2 USD  or more

     

  • Buy the Full Digital Album

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    All your favorite Missing Scenes collected on your preferred 1980s media technology.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Missing Scenes via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days

      $12 USD or more 

     

about

III. Lost Greek Tragedies


Ancient Greek Tragedy is a genre of the lost.

Carcinus the Younger wrote a play about Zeus’ lover Semele, for which we have the opening words:

O nights…

…and nothing else.

The single surviving line from the playwright Aristarchus is a meta-theatrical address to both the characters and the audience:

Rise up, herald! Make sure that the people hear!
Be silent and keep quiet and pay attention!

Scraps from the playwright Critias reveal a preoccupation with the Underworld:

…so that in silence we may pour these water vessels into the chasm in the earth.

The lost plays of Philocles apparently earned him the nickname “bile:”

He would not desist from eating brains…

Sometimes we get a glimpse of familiar characters – like in a play by Ion, whose fragments suggest a love affair between Odysseus and Helen of Troy:

And how did the stranger arrive in the bedchamber?

Snow-white Helen

And some fragments touch on real events, like those from a play by Phrynichus that possibly depict the Battle of Salamis:

…round about evening…

…men were killed up until evening…


And there is evidence of one astonishing rarity: a play by Agathon that, unlike any other known Greek tragedy, is not based on myth or history, but is purely fictional:

…however, nothing survives of this play but the title:

…and actually, the title itself is in dispute.

But sometimes…there is just enough of a lost play to give a sense of plot.

We can almost trace the shape formed by the broken pieces…if we could just see through the noise…

tripped up…Greek…altars…the god…madness…sent ruin…a cloud as a wife…sowed among the…had sexual intercourse with a daughter…of such boasts Ixion…he paid the gods’ penalty…madness on a wheel…in frenzy…unnoticed by people...hid, but Boreas…his body was torn to pieces…father offending against the gods…and I…his sufferings

But most of what remains of Ancient Greek Tragedy is just a handful of words; a flicker; a trace.

summoner
unclean or insane
illustrious
(s)he is decked out with lotus flowers
touching it lightly
glittering
cells of a honeycom
but, o gods, you who dwell beside these doors…!
radiant
bedimmed


- Indented text by various ancient Greek playwrights, trans. Matthew Wright, © Matthew Wright, 2017, The Lost Plays of Greek Tragedy Volume 1, Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Other text by Kate Soper.

credits

from Missing Scenes, released June 23, 2023

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Wet Ink Ensemble image

Wet Ink Ensemble New York, New York

Named “The Best Classical Music Ensemble of 2018” by The New York Times, the Wet Ink Ensemble is a collective of composers, performers and improvisers dedicated to adventurous music-making. Wet Ink has been presenting music by its members, by a broad range of renowned creators, and by emerging and underrepresented artists for over twenty years. www.wetink.org ... more

contact / help

Contact Wet Ink Ensemble

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this track or account

If you like Missing Scenes: III. Lost Greek Tragedies, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featuring Riley Pinkerton (aka The Rat Queen) from the theatrical NYC rockers, Castle Rat.
listen now