Art & MusicGreek → English
Monody
/ˈmɒnədi/noun
A song for one voice, or a poem lamenting a death.
The Greek roots
μόνος
mónos
alone, single
ᾠδή
ōidḗ
song
Literally: “single song”
The story of the word
In tragedy the monody was the lament an actor sang alone while the chorus stood back. Around 1600 the Florentine Camerata took the word for a single voice over a bare accompaniment, set against the thicket of polyphony they thought had buried the words, and opera came out of that argument. English poets used it for elegies instead: Milton subtitled Lycidas a monody.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
monologuemonopolyodeparodyrhapsody
In a sentence
Caccini's monodies were printed with the chords figured underneath.
She wrote a monody for her brother and never published it.