How to translate text using browser tools
1 June 2012 Le sifflement du serpent : du son inarticulé à la mise en musique
Sylvain Perrot
Author Affiliations +
Abstract

The hissing of the snake: how is it possible to set an inarticulate sound to music ?

For a Greek mind animal cries cannot be associated to human logos, for being inarticulate sounds. One of the best examples is the snake, whose cry is usually transcribed by the consonant [s], without any vocalizing. Therefore, snakes seem not to be musicians: melody is produced by vocals, according to Greek treatises on music. However, snakes are considered as musician animals by Greeks, like cicadas. The word syrigma, that Greeks used to define the hissing of the snake, means also the sound of the Pan flute. Moreover, Pytho's hissing becomes a theme of a musical composition that every musician has to make and to perform at the Pythian Games, the nomos pythikos: in one of its parts, he has to depict, with his Pythian aulos, the hissing Pytho gives when it is killed by Apollo's arrows. By consequence, he has to set to music something that is properly not musical.

© Publications Scientifiques du Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris.
Sylvain Perrot "Le sifflement du serpent : du son inarticulé à la mise en musique," Anthropozoologica 47(1), 345-361, (1 June 2012). https://doi.org/10.5252/az2012n1a11
Received: 26 July 2010; Accepted: 1 January 2012; Published: 1 June 2012
JOURNAL ARTICLE
17 PAGES

This article is only available to subscribers.
It is not available for individual sale.
+ SAVE TO MY LIBRARY

KEYWORDS
aulos
Delphes
Delphi
Hissing
Music
musique
Pythian
RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS
Get copyright permission
Back to Top