Reconstructing ancient Greek music, an impossible task?

This is what I thought: it is an impossible task. Until lately, I saw a replica of the Seikilos Epitaph from 200 BC/100 AD found in Aydin, Turkey (see: Revealing ancient Greek music, the Seikilos Epitaph). Since then, I have come across many articles treating and analyzing this unique subject.

 

Remains of ancient Greek music are very scant, leaving the impression that music was not popular in ancient Greece. Nothing is further from the truth since music then was all around, in theaters, athletics, education, and everyday life to express joy or sorrow. Ancient Greek music has been brought back to life thanks to, for instance, the achievements of the group LyrAvlos, a contraction of "lyra" (lyre) and "avlos" (flute). The group made several appearances, among which: The Athens Hall of Music and the Warsaw Opera shows, the Festival of Old Music in Stockholm and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, the co-operation with the National Orchestra of Athens in the First Greek Musical Celebrations, as well as at the 2004 Olympic Games.

 

Stefos, the leader of Lyravlos, worked hard to construct precise replicas of the old instruments to play the music from eons past. So far, 61 ancient songs have been saved, some on papyrus, others on shards or stone like the above-mentioned Seikilos Epitaph. Such stones and papyri from Egypt dating overall between 300 BC and 300 AD show a vocal notation consisting of letters and signs placed above the vowels of the words. Besides, the Greeks had worked out the mathematical ratios of musical intervals, in which an octave is 2:1, a fifth 3:2, and a fourth 4:3.

 

On the other hand, a musician and tutor in classics at Oxford University, Armand D’Angour, reminds us of Homer's epics, the love poems of Sappho, and the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides that originally were music. This means that pieces composed between 750 and 400 BC were to be sung partially or in their totality, accompanied by the lyre, reed pipes, and some percussion instruments.

 

The oldest musical document discovered to this date shows only a few bars from Orestes, probably written by Euripides himself in the 5^th century BC. How Euripides exactly fits modern analysis is hard to figure out, but it is known that with the words “I lament” and “I beseech,” he uses a falling, mournful cadence, while with the words “my heart leaps wildly,” the melody is rising. It is astonishing to learn that Athenian soldiers earned their meals while singing Euripides during their captivity in the quarries of Syracuse in 413 BC - a moving detail reported by Plutarch. From Homer, we know that the bards used a four-stringed lyre, the “phormix,” and we may assume that those strings were tuned to the four notes that survived in the later basic Greek scales. 

A thorough analysis has proved that rhythms, for instance, are preserved through the words themselves, based on the short or long syllables of the words. The instruments are known from statues, paintings, and literary descriptions, by which a musician amazingly can find the timbre and range of pitches they produce. For instance, the letter A at the top of the scale is actually a fifth higher than the letter N halfway down the alphabet. Absolute pitch can then be figured out based on the vocal ranges required to sing the surviving tunes. 

Yet this music is very far from our Western conception and comes closer to the sounds produced in India or the Middle East. It seems, however, that instrumental practice from the ancient Greeks still survives in some specific areas of Sardinia and Turkey. More technical details can be found in the article “How did ancient Greek music sound?” by Armand D'Angour.

Another important story is about a chip of papyrus found in a forgotten corner of the Louvre’s basement in 2002. It turned out to be a partition of Medea by Carcinos the Younger (approx. 360 BC) that was mentioned by Aristotle in his Rhetorics and in which the heroine, unlike in Euripides’ version, is innocent. So today, we can listen to the bewitching aria sung in a deep voice as in antiquity, the role of women was held by men. Annie Bélis, a world-renowned specialist in ancient music, studied this papyrus and other bits and pieces; she now concentrates on performing both vocal and instrumental scores that have survived, creating an ensemble called Kérylos. All the music partitions are authentic. The already known chorus score from Euripides’ Orestes, and the Seikilos Song of the two Delphic Hymns to the Pythian Apollo, have been deciphered and reproduced in her musical works. Among them, there also is an excerpt from Aristophanes’ Birds (nothing to do with Hadjidakis’ interpretation), a paean by Mesomedes of Crete (favorite composer of Emperor Hadrian), a piece from Carcinos’ Medea mentioned above, and an anonymous paean to the stars to name just a few. 

 

Based on strict archaeological references, Annie Bélis uses carefully rebuilt lyres, kitharas, flutes, and percussion instruments. For instance, statues, mainly of Apollo playing the lyre, and remains of instruments gleaned from different archaeological locations. So far, she has performed with the Ensemble Kérylos in several countries, including Greece, at Delphi. More recently, a special concert in Paris was organized in the frame of the exhibition “Au Royaume d’Alexandre le Grand. La Macédoine Antique” in 2011. Sorry to have missed it. More details can be found on the Kérylos site.

Based on all the above information and interpretation, we can almost recreate Alexander the Great's music. Isn’t that wonderful?