Thursday, May 12, 2016

Another reconstruction of ancient Greek music

In one of my earlier posts on the subject, Reconstructing ancient Greek music, an impossible task? I spoke about Armand D’Angour, a musician and tutor in classics at Oxford University, who reminded us that the epics of Homer, the love poems of Sappho, and the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides 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.

At present, he and other scholars claim to be able to reconstruct and perform those ancient songs with 100% accuracy. Hereunder is a rendering by David Creese, a classist from the University of Newcastle. This is an ancient Greek song composed by Seikilos (see: Revealing ancient Greek music, the Seikilos Epitaph) and performed on an eight-string zither-like instrument with movable bridges. 

 
  So, how about that for a lazy afternoon listening?

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