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Horace's Odes and the Mystery of Do-Re-Mi

edited, with translation and commentary by Stuart Lyons

Lyons' acclaimed verse translation of the Odes is here fully revised and includes revealing new material on Horace and the nature of his work. The book describes the life and times of Horace. It places his experiences and writings in the context of the civil wars and the Augustan Age, and explains how his literary career was bound up with the rise and fall of his sponsor Maecenas. It brings together compelling evidence that Horace composed and conducted the Carmen Saeculare for the Centennial Games of 17 BC, and that his odes were indeed carmina: songs. Horace was not just a superb literary craftsman, but a musician, songwriter and entertainer for the Roman elite, creating a new Latin idiom derived from Greek lyric song. A final chapter, "Horace, Guido and the Do-re-mi Mystery", the result of careful research and detective work, argues that Guido d'Arezzo, an eleventh-century Benedictine choirmaster, used the melody of Horace's Ode to Phyllis to invent the do-re-mi mnemonic, but applied it to an eighth-century Hymn to John the Baptist ("Ut queant laxis") by Paul the Deacon, keeping the true source secret. A musical comparison of the Horatian melody and Guido's version of "ut-re-mi" is included.

The verse translation of the Odes was named a Financial Times Book of the Year 1996 and was welcomed as "a wonderful rendering of one of the great, central poets in the European tradition." It conveys the richness and musicality of Horace's Odes for the non-Latinist. Enjoyable in its own right, it enables the author's arguments to be fully understood by the general reader. There is a glossary of over 400 proper names. 244p (first edition Staffordshire University Press 1996, second edition Aris & Phillips, an imprint of Oxbow Books 2007)

Review Quotes

"An interesting read, written with commenadable warmth for its subject matter,"

Justine T Wolfenden
JACT (2008)

"Lyon's translation is well worth reading for his wit and his often inspired rhymes,"

Steven J Willett
Bryn Mawr Classical Review (2008)

"Combining scholarship with a gripping sense of narrative"

Christopher Morley
Musical Opinion (2007)

"With brilliant detective work, Stuart Lyons unravels the musical character of Horace's Odes and traces a remarkable link between Horatian music, Guido d'Arezzo and the discovery of do-re-mi. He adds a complete set of verse translations which, like the original, are elegant, clear and deceptively simple, and put the tune back into Horace's songs."

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill
Director, British School at Rome

Related Titles

• Horace: Satires I
  by P. M. Brown

• Horace Satires II
  by F. Muecke

• The Mystery of Do-Re-Mi
  

• Music in the Odes of Horace
  by Stuart Lyons

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