Paean (pronounced pee-uhn)
(1) A
hymn of invocation or thanksgiving, sun in Ancient Greece to Apollo or some
other deity.
(2) By
extension, a song of praise, joy or triumph, especially if sung loudly and
joyously).
(3) By
extension, an expression of reverential or enthusiastic praise.
1535–1545:
From the Latin paean, (religious or
festive hymn; hymn of deliverance, hymn to a help-giving god), from the Ancient
Greek (παιάν (also παιήων or παιών)) (paiān)
(hymn to Apollo), from his title Paiā́n
(or Paiōn) (denoting the physician to
the gods), from the phrase Ἰὼ Παιᾱ́ν (Iṑ Paiā́n) (“O
Paean!, Thanks to Paean!). As well as
the name (from Homer) by which the divine physician was known, paiān was later an epithet of Apollo and
thus of interest is the literal translation "one who touches" (in the
sense of “curing by a touch of the hand”), perhaps from a word in the hymn like
paio (to touch, strike). English picked it up as paean (as
did Middle French) which was adopted in many languages but variations include
the French péan (although the Middle French paean peacefully co-exists),
the Italian peana and the Portuguese
peã & péan.
The
Greek παιάν was from παιάϝων (paiáwōn)
(one who heals illnesses with magic) but the origin is contested. Some etymologists link it with παῖϝα &
παϝία (blow), related to παίω (beat), from the primitive Indo-European pēu-, pyu- & pū- (to hit; to cut)-
or παύω (paúō) (withhold; to bring to
an end; to abate, to stop), from the primitive Indo-European pehw- (few, little; smallness). Paiān
remains however mysterious and may be from the Archaic Greek or indeed be pre-Greek. Paean (present participle paeaning & past
participle paeaned) & paeanism are nouns, paeanic is an adjective,
paeanically seems to have been used as an adverb and paeanize is a verb
(apparently first used by philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) in the early
seventeenth century). The noun plural is
paeans and the alternative spelling (in occasional US use) is pean (pæan the traditional form). A paean may variously be referred to
variously as a hymn, acclamation, anthem, ode, praise, psalm, song, laud or
laudation and, outside the technical use in texts from Antiquity, the choice is
probably dictated by context and desired literary effect.
A fresco of Apollo playing the kithara, from a building in the Forum of Rome (Augustan period), Museum of the Forum Romanum, Rome.
As the
lyrical phrase “O Paean!” hints, in Antiquity, a Paean was a song of joyful triumph.
Most surviving texts suggest the paean
was written usually in the ancient Greek Dorian mode and was accompanied by the
kithara, the instrument of Apollo, god of music. The military, when paeans were sung on the battlefield,
augmented the kithara by the aulos and kithara.
Confusion
still sometimes surrounds the understanding of the Greek Dorian Mode because it
was long confused with the modern use of “Dorian” mode. Like many of the tangled constructions and
interpretations from Greek & Latin which endure to this day, the fault lies
mostly with medieval ecclesiastical scholars.
Some of the names of musical modes in use today, (Mixolydian, Dorian et
al), are direct borrowings in spelling but not meaning, the scribes of the
Church misunderstanding the mechanics of Greek texts. In Athens and beyond, intervals were counted
from top to bottom whereas the practice during the Middle Ages was (sometimes) to
work from bottom to top, hence the jumble.
The error was recognized by the seventeenth century but such had been
the proliferation of the new conventions of use that the misinterpretations
were allowed to remain, labelled “Church Modes” to distinguish them from the
ancients.
The
problems began with the translation of a treatise on music (De institutione musica (The Structure of Music (circa 507)) by Boethius
(Saint Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius; circa 478-524, a Roman and historian
and philosopher) which was neglected until unearthed by scholars during the ninth
century who found it so compelling it was soon the most widely translated and
disseminated medieval work on the subject.
The influence of Boethius was immense, his De consolatione philosophiae (On the Consolation of Philosophy (523))
one of the classic works through which the classical age was understood during
the centuries which followed although modern historians do caution the medieval
(and later) reverence of antiquity did lead to some idealized and romantic
visions of the lost world taking hold.
Both Plato
& Aristotle fancied themselves as musicologists and thought the ancient
Greek Dorian the most "manly" of all the musical modes, suggesting it
could move soldiers to heroic acts in battle. The famous Battle
of Thermopylae, a paean composed for a solo lyre, was inspired by the tale
of two-thousand-odd Spartans, Thespians & Thebans, a rear-guard which for
two days defied a whole Persian army at the battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. Professional musicians today note that to
convey the martial spirit which should be summoned in performance, it’s vital
to understand the ancient Greek Dorian mode so it’s played with the vigor
Plato & Aristotle described when writing of the technique.
The USS Pueblo, moored on the Taedong River in Pyongyang, part of the DPRK’s Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum.
The USS
Pueblo (AGER-2) is a lightly-armed, US Navy scientific research vessel which in
January 1968 was attacked and captured by the DPRK (North Korean) military which
alleged she was engaged in espionage activities while in their territorial waters.
One US sailor was killed during the attack, the surviving 82 seized
and not released for almost a year, a period described variously as the Pueblo “affair”,
“incident" or “crisis".
The Pueblo is still held in the DPRK as a war-prize (although the legal
status of that is dubious) and the US Navy has never struck the vessel from the
active list, Washington’s position that it was seized illegally and should be
returned.
Bowing North Koreans make their grateful paeans before the statue of Kim Il-sung (1912-1994, Great Leader of the DPRK 1948-1994).
The
word paean came in handy as a diplomatic device. As part of the deal securing the sailors’ release,
the captain issued a statement "confess(ing) to his and the crew's
transgression." Before he recorded
the brief speech, the text was checked by the DPRK government and they were
presumably pleased at the capitalist lackeys saying: "We paean the DPRK. We paean the Great Leader, Kim Il Sung. We paean the DPRK flag" but missed an
essential nuance, the captain pronouncing "paean" as "pee
on". Nor did seizing the hardly
imposing Pueblo achieve the Great Leader’s strategic objective, the US increasing
its diplomatic and military support for the ROC (South Korea).