Delphic Hymns and ancient Greek music

My first discovery of Greek musical annotations happened in 2012 when I saw the Seikilos column at the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam. This temporary exhibition held a copy of the Seikilos Epitaph from Copenhagen that showed ancient Greek music (see: Revealing ancient Greek music, the Seikilos Epitaph). It was presented as the oldest surviving example of musical composition in the world, dating back to between 200 BC and 100 AD. At that time, I learned that older Greek music inscriptions existed but only fragmentarily, as is the case for the Delphic Hymns. 

While the Seikilos Epitaph is the only complete song we have, the Delphic Hymns are simply the oldest surviving examples so far, dating from the 2^nd century BC. These Hymns were carved on the southern wall of the Treasury of the Athenians in Delphi. They contain hymns praising Apollo, his birth, his life, and his protection of Athens and Delphi, with music to be played on a shrill-sounding flute and a golden, sweet-sounding cithara. These hymns to Apollo were performed during the Pythian Games, a major venue for musical contests that originally focused on art and dance. 

The two inscriptions from the Treasury of the Athenians, now exhibited at the Museum of Delphi, belong to a series of about fifty similar hymns from ancient Greece. A study revealed that these songs of praise or triumph were composed for the Pythian Games of 128 BC, i.e., the ritual procession of the Athenians towards Delphi. Apollo is also hailed for his help in fighting the Galatians in 189 BC, as the Romans won the battle against these Celtic tribes in Asia Minor. 

Like the Seikilos inscriptions, the Delphic Hymns hold musical symbols for the instruments and other notations for the singing voice next to the lyrics. We owe the interpretation of these symbols to Alypius of Alexandria, a musicographer who lived in the 3^rd century AD. 

I followed the history of ancient Greek music and the reconstruction of ancient instruments, mainly the lyre/cithara and the flute, from 2016 onward, with several updates after Reconstructing ancient Greek music, an impossible task? We still find it difficult to accept that Homer's epics or the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides originally were sung partially or in their entirety.

The sounds produced by ancient instruments are a far cry from today’s music, even from what is considered classical music or medieval troubadours. Modern music is mostly loud, to be heard beyond the daily noises of traffic, airplanes, and too many people attending the open-air events with screaming amplifiers. It is hard to imagine a quiet, tranquil spot in nature where we could catch the sound of a faraway flute or a string instrument floating on the wind. The basic essence of musical notes no longer reaches us.

With new discoveries and future in-depth research, we may expect to learn more about the music played in antiquity that could have been familiar to Alexander. I hope.

[Pictures from the Delphi Archaeological Museum]