In Early Medieval Europe first view, there is a review of the Companion by Mark Vessey:
– impeccably edited
– a work of reference which in the clarity and density of its coverage of a relatively compact oeuvre achieves a comprehensiveness scarcely conceivable for more historically influential figures
– speak[s] eloquently both for our own time and for what its authors agree in seeing as its subject’s mode of existence in his
– Sidonius has got the Companion he deserved.
Conchita Fernández López has published a new translation into Galician and Castilian, with Latin text, of the Pervigilium Veneris. She opts for a date of Summer 475/476 and the probability of Sidonius’ authorship:
Perviligum Veneris. Alborada de Venus. Vísperas de Amor. Texto y traducciones gallega y castellana de María Concepción Fernández López, Lugo: AXAC, 2020.
Item in catalogue Axac here.
Joop van Waarden has reviewed Filomena Giannotti’s Scrinia Arverna in CR First View 2022.
As part of the Celtic Conference (Lyon, 18-21 July), a panel, organised by Scott DiGiulio and Dominic Machado, will convene on “Poeticis magis decora? Latin Prose and the Limits of Intertextuality”. Joop van Waarden will be speaking on “Sidonius’ Journey to Rome at Ockham’s Razor’s Edge”.
Full programme on the conference website.
Alison John and Alan Ross will be organising a conference in Oxford on 8-9 July titled “Translation and the Limits of Greek-Latin Bilingualism in Late Antiquity”. Among other speakers, Filomena Giannotti will speak on “Challenging Decadence Through Translation. A Literary Example from Sidonius Apollinaris (Ep. 8.3) and his work on Philostratus’ Vita Apollonii”.
Programme and particulars here
Marco Formisano, in ‘The King Listens: Origins, Noises, and Panegyric in Sidonius Apollinaris’ Carmen 1’ (Arethusa 54 (2021) 275-90), contends “that the opening position of Carmen 1 is relevant, not only to its own interpretation, but also to the interpretation of the subsequent panegyric and to Sidonius’s poetry as a whole”. “Noise” precedes “meaning” in poetry, and in panegyric above all.
Go to this issue of Arethusa.
Out in the latest Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome: Massimiliano Vitiello, ‘The “Fear” of the Barbarians and the Fifth-Century Western Chroniclers’, MAAR 66 (2021) 115-50.
Read in JSTOR open access.
INVITATION TO THE DANCE
As a surprise, a full-blown classical piece for chorus and orchestra with this title from 1936 by the American composer Arthur Sheperd turned up in a recent haul through Google. It is set to the text of Sidonius’ ‘Age, convocata pubes’ in an adaptation by Howard Jones. Below the results of a first investigation, added to the Reception – Other – United States section of this website.
Who knows of a recording of this piece?
Arthur Sheperd (1880-1958), Invitation to the Dance for chorus and orchestra (1936) on a poem by Howard Mumford Jones (1892-1980) after Sidonius Apollinaris, Carm. 37 in Ep. 9.13.5 ‘Age, convocata pubes’:
Spread the board with linen snow.
Bid ivy and the laurel grow
Over it, and with them twine
The green branches of the vine.
Bring great baskets that shall hold
Cytisus and the marigold,
Cassia and starwort bring
And crocuses, till everything,
Couch and sideboard, all shall be
A garland of perfumery.
Then with balsam-perfumed hand
Smooth disheveled locks; and stand
Frankincense about, to rise —
An Arabian sacrifice —
Smoking to the lofty roof.
Next, let darkness be a proof
That our lamps with day may vie,
Glittering from the chamber’s sky.
Only in their bowls be spilled
Oil nor grease, but have them filled
With such odorous balm as came
From the east to give them flame.
Then bid loaded servants bring
Viands that shall please a king,
Bowing underneath the weight
Of chased silver rich and great.
Last, in bowl and patera
And in caudron mingle a
Portion of Falernian wine
With due nard, while roses shine
Wreathed about the cup and round
The cup’s tripod. We’ll confound —
Where the garlands sway in grace
From vase to alabaster vase —
All the measures of the dance;
And our languid limbs shall glance
In a mazy Mænad play.—
Step and voice shall Bacchus sway,
And in garment let each man
Be a Dionysian!
See William S. Newman, ‘Arthur Sheperd’, The Musical Quarterly 36,2 (1950) 159-79, esp. 172; Archives West, entry ‘Arthur Sheperd’, Choral works 9.1; WorldCat, entry ‘Invitation to the dance’. Text from Philip S. Allen, The Romanesque Lyric, with renderings into English verse by Howard M. Jones, University of North Carolina Press, 1928, reprinted in An Anthology of World Poetry, ed. Mark Van Doren, New York, 1928, p. 453-54, where Sheperd may well have found it; also available here and here.
Eryn Ford received her MA degree in Classical Studies at the University of Ottawa with a thesis on the principles of organisation of Ruricius’ letter collection. Sidonius is omnipresent.
Download it here
Joop van Waarden has published the second part of his series on ‘You and I’ in epistolary usage: ‘Symmachus and the Metamorphosis of “You and I” in Epistolary Usage’, in: Antonella Bruzzone, Alessandro Fo and Luigi Piacente (eds), Metamorfosi del Classico in età romanobarbarica, Nuova biblioteca di cultura romanobarbarica 2, Florence: Sismel–Galluzzo, 2021, 145-61.
Info volume here
The first, and central, part of this series is chapter 13 in the Sidonius Companion: ‘“You” and “I” in Sidonius’ Correspondence’ (pp. 418-39). The third part is to follow soon: ‘A Gentleman Weighs His “You” and “I”: Inclusion in the Letters of Faustus, Mamertus Claudianus, Ruricius, Avitus and Ennodius’, in: Veronika Egetenmeyr and Tabea L. Meurer (eds), Gallia docta? Learning and Its Limitations in Late Antique Gaul. Proceedings of the International Conference Greifswald, 17.03.2021 – 20.03.2021, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
