Does anyone have a good recitation of Aeneid book 1?
All I have is the one from Adler’s website that reads up to line 49.
Also, is the technique used in this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoD0vjQidrc&feature=related
one of the closest restored classical reading on the web?
I like it because of its rhythmic quality but I’m not sure if that’s the ‘right’ way.
Yes.
That performance is a mechanical recitation for the purpose of clarifying quantity and ictus to students who don’t understand either concept. In the Comments the performer makes it clear that his recitation is not a dramatic reading, nor should it be taken as such.
In other words, it’s a start, and it’s a good one if you don’t have a handle on quantity and accent in Latin.
What Cantator said. The follow up, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1GkN-qqXMM , is intended to be more “natural” and dramatic, but has been criticized, perhaps rightly so, as still being too mechanical, by a certain Horatius Flaccus, whose recitation style can be enjoyed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YADQlCJS0pU
If we leave Youtube, there is the reading of book 4 of the Aeneid by Wilfried Stroh, which I particularly recommend: http://wiredforbooks.org/aeneid/. It has most things you can ask for: dramatic performance, better than usual classical pronunciation, and careful attention to the quantitative meter. (If there is one thing I would complain about, it is that he at a few times stress the ictus, erreonously in my opinion. For example, at the very start he reads “multa virà virtús animó, multusque recursat
gentis honós”, despite clearly knowing better.)
In my thinking, Alatius, Stroh nicely gives weight or emphasis (in the ictus) to those terminal syllables, for weight and Latin accent are not the same thing. More accurately, it’s rather a deemphasis of a word’s normal accent. The effect of this in the first feet of a hexameter is to drive anticipation forward (questioningly, almost), to be resolved in the last. [Not an original thought. I think Pharr says something like that somewhere.]
Ut puto, Alati, accentus vi (et vi ictûs) dissimilis est, quod permittit ut Stroh syllabis ultimis gravitatem det. Meliùs magìs dicere, vulgaris verbi accentus deest. Qui effectus facit ut ictus urget primis in pedibus hexametri (paenè quaesente modo), quod in ultimis cernitur.
Yes, I know I have read about that theory before as well: that the ictus was/should be manifested by added emphasis (weight, stress), which didn’t necessarily interfer with the normal (pitch) accent. I belive, IIRC, that where I read this, it dealt with Greek poetry, but the same can of course be applied to Latin poetry as well, if we accept that the Latin accent/stress was had a pitch element. I am not averse to this theory.
However, from what I hear, this is not what Stroh does in this particular phrase, for he also distinctly accents (use a higher pitch) on the last syllables of “virtus”, “animo”, and “honos”. (I’m willing to let “viri” pass.) This is not his usual pronunciation; for example, his treatment of “gravi”, “alit venis”, “haerent” and “placidam membris” sounds perfect to my ears, as do the wast majority of such cases. It is only in a few places, the most striking perhaps being the one mentioned, where he indeed accents the ictus, and therefore I’m still mostly inclined to regard these as momentarily lapses.
What’s IIRC, Alatius? Quid est, Alati?
Sorry; “if I recall correctly”. I don’t remember where, so I can’t give a reference.
No problem. Thanks, Alatius. Licet. Gratias, Alati..