Armand D'Angour

D'Angour has conducted research into the sounds of ancient Greek music (since 2013), aiming to recreate the sound of the earliest substantial notated document of Greek music (from Euripides' drama Orestes), and to establish connections with much later Western musical traditions. D'Angour's book Socrates in Love (2019) presents new evidence for a radically revisionist historical thesis regarding the role of Aspasia of Miletus in the development of Socrates' thought. How to Innovate: An Ancient Guide to Creative Thinking (2021) distils for the general reader some of the findings relating to innovation explored in his academic monograph The Greeks and the New: Novelty in Ancient Greek Imagination and Experience (Cambridge 2011).

• Name — Armand D'Angour • Born — 23 November 1958 • Birthplace — London • Thesis Url — http: discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1317661/ • Thesis Title — The dynamics of innovation: newness and novelty in the Athens of Aristophanes • Thesis Year — 1998 • Workplaces — Jesus College, Oxford • Doctoral Advisor — Peter Lunt Richard Janko Alan Griffiths • Website — http: www.armand-dangour.com/

D'Angour was born in London, England, and was educated at Sussex House School and as a King's Scholar at Eton College. While at Eton, he won the Newcastle Scholarship in 1976 (the last year in which the original twelve exams in Classics and Divinity were set), and was awarded a Postmastership (full academic scholarship) to Merton College, Oxford to read classics. Having learned to play the piano from the age of six and the cello from the age of 11, from 1976 to 1979 D'Angour undertook a Performer's Course, with piano and cello as joint first instruments, at the Royal College of Music, London, where he studied piano with Angus Morrison and cello with Anna Shuttleworth and Joan Dickson. D'Angour went on to read classics at Oxford (1979–83), during which he won the Gaisford Greek Prose Prize, the Chancellor's Latin Verse Prize, the Hertford Scholarship, and the Ireland and Craven Scholarship, and graduated with a Double First (BA Hons, Literae Humaniores). In 1981-2 he conducted the Kodály Choir and orchestra, with performances including Brahms' 1st Piano Concerto (with Colin Stone, piano), Poulenc's Organ Concerto (with Michael Emery, organ) and Fauré's Requiem (with Rudolf Piernay, baritone). In 1983, he sat for a Prize Fellowship by Examination at All Souls College, but was unsuccessful. He then studied cello in the Netherlands with cellist Anner Bylsma, and now regularly performs as cellist with the London Brahms Trio. From 1987 to 1994 D'Angour worked in and eventually managed a family business. In 1994-8 he researched for a PhD at University College London on the dynamics of innovation in ancient Athens, a topic inspired by both his classical background and his experience of innovation in business. During this period he co-authored a book with Steven Shaw on swimming in relation to the principles of the Alexander Technique.

In the course of his doctoral research, D'Angour published his first scholarly article (in Classical Quarterly 1997) "How the Dithyramb Got Its Shape", in which he restored the opening lines of a fragment of Pindar (fr. 70b from Dithyramb 2, first published in 1919) to show that it refers to the creation of the 'circular dance' (kuklios choros), the form in which the dithyramb was performed in Athens in the early fifth century BC. The article contributed to a renewed interest in the ancient genre of the dithyramb, and has featured in numerous articles and books (including Dithyramb in Context, ed. B. Kowalzig and P. Wilson, Oxford 2013) that explore the subject from different angles. He also published an article (1999) detailing the technical and political background to the adoption of the Ionic alphabet (still the standard Greek script) by a decree of Eucleides in Athens in 403 BC. In 2000, D'Angour was appointed Fellow in Classics at Jesus College, Oxford. He extended the chronological scope of this doctoral research to produce The Greeks and the New (published by Cambridge University Press in 2011), a wide-ranging academic study of novelty and innovation in ancient Greece; he has applied the findings of his research to business and to other domains, including music and psychoanalytic theory. His TedED lessons on Archimedes' Eureka Moment and the Origins of the Ancient Olympics have attracted millions of views. In March 2019, he published Socrates in Love: The Making of a Philosopher, in which he presents new evidence for the identification of Diotima in Plato's Symposium with Aspasia of Miletus. D'Angour became Professor of Classics in 2020 Oxford Recognition of Distinction. His book How to Innovate: an Ancient Guide to Creative Thinking(Princeton, 2021) summarises some of the ideas that were presented in The Greeks and the New, and offers a four-part template for understanding how innovation comes about and how it might be fostered. In August 2024, D'Angour began hosting the podcast series It's All Greek (and Latin) to Me with comedian and television presenter Jimmy Mulville for Hat Trick Productions. The series "aims to shine a light on the ancient world through expressions, stories and quotes from Classical literature that we use in our everyday lives".

In 2013–15, D'Angour conducted a Research Fellowship awarded by the British Academy to investigate the way music interacted with poetic texts in ancient Greece. In 2013 he published a conjectural verse reconstruction of the lost portion of Sappho's famous fragment 31. In May 2015 D'Angour appeared in a BBC Four documentary entitled 'Sappho', for which he used scholarly evidence to recompose the music for two stanzas of an ancient Sapphic song; in July 2016 he organised and presented a research-driven concert of ancient music in the Nereids Gallery of the British Museum. In January 2017 he was interviewed about his research into ancient Greek music by Labis Tsirigotakis as part of the programme 'To the Sound of Big Ben' on Greek TV's ERT1 Channel; and in July 2017 the first public performance of his musical reconstructions of the chorus preserved on papyrus from Euripides Orestes (408 BC) and the Delphic Paean of Athenaeus (127 BC) was given at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. D'Angour has argued for the affective symbolism and tonal basis of Greek music of the Classical period, and for its connection to much later European musical traditions. His numerous public talks, media interviews, and online presentations on the topic led to the award in 2017 by the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University Louise Richardson of a prize for public engagement with research. He subsequently composed music in ancient Greek style to accompany a series of performances of Euripides' play Alcestis (438 BC) staged in the Greek theatre at Bradfield College in June 2019, and his research has inspired other stage performances including that of Euripides' Herakles at Barnard College, Columbia in 2019.

D'Angour's research into the early life of the philosopher Socrates led him to propose an argument for Plato's modelling (rather than identification, as had long been suggested by 18th and 19th century writers) of Diotima in Symposium on Aspasia of Miletus. His book on the subject, Socrates in Love, was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal in May 2019, with reviewer Jamie James writing: Reviews also appeared in The Times (by Patrick Kidd), The Telegraph (by Nikhil Krishnan), The Financial Times (by Peter Stothard), and numerous other journals. In a detailed review published in 2021 in Ancient Philosophy, philosopher David Hoinski accepts D'Angour's contention that the contribution of women such as Aspasia to ancient philosophy has received too little attention by modern scholars. Tim Whitmarsh, reviewing Socrates in Love in The Guardian, commends D'Angour's application of prosopographical methods to the Athenian male elite, but avoids addressing the arguments made for the Socrates–Aspasia relationship. David Sansone in Bryn Mawr Classical Review comments that the book "presents us with an intriguing alternative to the usual view of the real Socrates” rather than the standard ones that neglect the reality of Socrates having once been young. Whitmarsh early on observes in his review that "This is a learned, agile and slickly written book, but it is not without its problems"; he concludes that the portrayal of Socrates and Aspasia in it is a "donnish just-so story... best left to the Victorians." Sansone is even more cutting: "it is necessary to ensure that all the evidence be presented accurately and evaluated with care. It cannot be said that D’Angour has succeeded in doing this."