Dissonance | Pauline LeVen | Bryn Mawr Classical Review | 15th December 2016

What were the sounds of Ancient Greece? What did the poets hear in their heads as they wrote? Sean Alexander Gurd explores these questions in his “thrilling” new book, Dissonance, a work of “sensuous scholarship” for the mind and ears. “It is only silent at night. The rising sun sets the air popping and sizzling. Goats and sheep bleat, cows raise a clamor, bulls bellow. Cicadas sing, as do birds. The earth is split by thunder. Where there is sound, there is danger, disruption, agony, or worse.”