Added: 4 years ago
From: Klezfiddle1
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  • Imagine people doing break dance to this music. XD

  • thank you!

  • Is this song copyrighted to its respected owners or is it in the public domain? ;)

    Nice cover sounds great!

  • It's amazing an ancient Greek melody that is thousands of years old has been revived and uploaded to an interactive world web in the 21st century

  • so old it's in 240p!

  • I bought the album Ancient Landscapes. It's lovely and very relaxing. Thank you for your musical gift!

  • @MissStarlustre I am glad you appreciate my "Musical Adventures in Time Travel"! Thanks you for your interest in my music...

  • Wait that's not deh oldest melody! lol only joking mate really good

  • he doesnt look that old..

  • Sounds better than most of the music today.

  • The Epitaph of Seikilos is not certain to be music of the antiquity, its origins are disputed, just as with every music piece from that era. And that music, of which we really have absolutely no idea how it sounded, in fact, was... probably... monodic.

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  • Wasn't this tune sung by Nero in the film "Quo Vadis"? If I recall, he was supposed to be its composer. Oh, well..he was a plagiarizer along with everything else!

  • Who said Greece was part of the Western civilization? lol So funny how they claim Greeks and Romans to be part of the Western civilization, at the same time nationalist West Europeans say Italians and Greeks are not European at all. Fact is Greeks and Italians are closer to Mediterrenean nations than to West European. West Europe only wants to take credit for your history, nothing else.

  • @donthakiller haha yes it's true... "western civilization" is a meaningless term people use to link their lineage to the civilizations of ancient greece and rome... just like ancient greek and roman kings commissioned the creation of epic poems to claim their relationship to Apollo and Zeus... nothing changes really...

  • For a minute in this song i felt like the person who wrote it was writting about being happy early in the morning.

  • How much does a lyre cost?

    

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  • Excellent ! Merci.

  • . . . this on itunes :P

  • what is the instumants called

  • So in which part do they break the dishes?

  • Tell me, how have you tuned this? It sounds like mixolydian with a somewhat flat 7th. (not quite a neutral seventh though)

  • εύγε

  • Wow, this is fantastic!

  • ΕΛΛΑΣ!!! Looks like The Greeks have always had a way with music from ancient times to this very day!! 

  • what is sad is that there is no greek comment..  και αυτό είναι που πονάει περισσότερο...

  • riffing of the ancestors^^

    no, seriously, sounds beautiful, good work!

  • Rock n' Roll since then.

  • @bignose155678 for some reason i had the same thought lol

  • Ὅσον ζῇς, φαίνου/Hoson zês, phainou/Mientras vivas, brilla/While you live, shine//μηδὲν ὅλως σὺ λυποῦ/mêden holôs su lupou/Nada se haga tu sufrimiento/don't suffer anything // πρὸς ὀλίγον ἐστὶ τὸ ζῆν/pros oligon esti to zên/pues la vida existe solo un breve momento/life exists only a short while//τὸ τέλος ὁ xρόνος ἀπαιτεῖ/to telos ho chronos apaitei/y el tiempo pedirá su derecho/and time demands its toll.

  • Very interesting. When I first developed talent as a guitarist, I went on a theory binge, collecting scales and modes much like kids collect baseball cards by completing a checklist. A friend loaned me Nicholas Slonimsky's "Lectionary of Music", and the terms hypodorian, hypolydian etc soon caught my eye and forced me to wrap my head around the concept of a traditional scale tonic to its 5th. Ancient music is evidence this music is still valid and pleasing to our 21st century "western" ears.

  • apis4....ottoman trust God as you thought.Even if you did not recruit.Have you ungrateful but.and Turks live with the poor Have you submitted your neighbors Greek army troops to the wild.Did you enjoy the suffering neighbors.You are the real liars and thieves

  • api4 ...I do not accept what you say.if the Turks were not. orthodox Greece would not have been. would you be Italian.Turks do not steal.Islam forbids lying and theft.state administration was satisfied with all the Greeks Turks.Ottoman era the Greek very stylish clothes.throughout Europe in the same period a very simple and ordinary clothes.

  • what ur doing is exceptional, i wud love to interview u for my youtube channel, contact me

  • DUDE THIS SHIT IS EPIC!

  • excellent. thanks for sharing

  • Κουραστηκα, και βαρεθηκα, να ακουω, απο ασχετους, και εγκαθετους, αυτο που αναφερεται σε καποιο σχολιο πιο πανω, Οτι, Πολλες Ελληνικες λεξεις ειναι βασισμενες σε Εβραικες, και Αραμαικες. ΣΥΜΒΑΙΝΕΙ ΑΚΡΙΒΩΣ ΤΟ ΑΝΤΙΘΕΤΟ. Οταν ο Ομηρος εγραφε την Ιλιαδα, και την Οδυσσεια, αυτοι τρωγανε ο ενας τον αλλο ακομη. ΕΛΕΟΣ

  • beautiful song

  • Sounds great. But can you tell me...what proof do you have that this is the oldest melody....do you have the score and if so where could I get it from???. Im really interested to find out. Im just about to do some research on Biblical music its instruments and its modes.Can you give me some direction.

    Thanks

  • @fabpete1 It is not the oldest melody - it is the oldest complete melody, so far discovered, from Ancient Greece (as opposed to the many smallincomplete fragments of music also discovered). The modern notation for "Epitaph of Seikilos" is available from Wikipidia! Regarding Biblical music, check out the "History of the Lyre" section of my "ancientlyre" website (URL given on my Youtube Channel Page). There are also links in my website to many other relevant texts/websites...

  • @Klezfiddle1 . i thought it was the oldest piece of music found that was "written down". but not complete. only a fragment of it... i believe the central part of the sheet... missing the outer parts.....

  • @Klezfiddle1

    the oldest written melody in the history was found in Syria (in an old Phoenician city called "Ugarit") North-west of Syria...

    I dont know what do you meen by "complete"? anyways, the oldest written melody was found in Syria...

    thank you for your video it's amazing too

  • @malikkaka1 I know! That is whay I called this the oldest COMPLETE melody - the Hurrian Hymn from c.1400BC(as transcribed from the original Cuneiform text by Richard Dumbrill, & which features on my album on iTunes "An Ancient Lyre"), was a small FRAGMENT of written music - check out my "live" performance of this piece on Youtube, "The Oldest Written Melody in History". The "Song of Seikilos", unlike the Hurrian Hymn, survived completely in tact, for 2000 years, exactly as written!

  • @malikkaka1 Bullshit , jackass..

  • Γεια σας μόνο αναρωτιούνται προσπαθώ να επιζητήσει μια ελληνική κυρία με αυτή την υπέροχη μουσική του Απόλλωνα που είναι το καλύτερο να χρησιμοποιήσετε

  • This is really neat. We've just finished studying this piece in my Music Literature class. 

  • this is a anatolian song not greece song.seiklos city is tralles .tralles in aydın / turkey.

  • @1969yaman Turkey used to be Byzantium, before that, it was Rome, before that, long before Turkey came into existence in the 15th C, it was Greek, well. basicaly.. Maca-Grecan culture was the predominant one. So, no, its NOT Turkey, Turkey isnt Turkey, Turkey, the country founded on theft.

  • this is a anatolian song not greece song.seiklos city is tralles .tralles in aydın / turkey.

  • What is this instrument

  • @ilovethemoon963 It is a replica lyre - similar to the ancient Greek Kithara - the large wooden lyre favoured by the professional musicians of ancient Greece. For all details, please also visit my "ancientlyre" website...

  • music is the key of life:)

  • this is the oldest!!

    youtube.com/watch?v=NeP_AS0Dqa­U

    5400 years old!!

    Echoes from Ugarit: The Oldest Music Notation In History!

  • this is the oldest!!

    youtube.com/watch?v=NeP_AS0Dqa­U

    5400 years old!!

    Echoes from Ugarit: The Oldest Music Notation In History!

  • Ancient Greece...Just look at that song.It's just so spiritual...Those people must have really known something more than we do today..

  • Elton John music? =D

    weird, but the piece sound really modern

  • I wonder what scale they used for their music? To me it sounds like a minor harmonic (b3 - maj7) scale, but that is probably my modern ear. I thought they only dealt with pentatonic scales back then.

  • It sounds ALOT like the Brokeback Moutain background music in the beginning.

  • those were just, FUCKING PATHEIC CHORDS!!! this piece is pathetic

  • @timmy1000100 I wouldn't make such rude remarks. Especially since I'm betting that you couldn't play 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' on an instrument like that.

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  • You must be right about the mutual cultural influence between ancient Greece and Israel. I don't speak Greek but I do speak Hebrew and know for a fact that many Greek words are based on Hebrew or Aramaic. This is riveting music, pity there is so little of it left.

  • @lilythepink123 The more I dig, the more evidence there is gto be found! A piece of ancient Greek music, "Tecmessa's Lament", uses exactly the same scale as the Hebrew "Misherebekh" mode...still heard in Klezmer music today (eg "Odessa Bulgar)! The Biblical Philistines were very likey Proto-Greeks in origin - indeed, the Philistines were some of the 1st ancient cultures to use ensembles of musicians - ironically, Judean Temple Music may have had it's origins with the Philistines!

  • @lilythepink123

    You will be surpriced but Greek isnt based on other languages...infact Hebrew are Greek. There was a book printed in Londen UK with title - Hebrew is Greek - by Josef yahuda (which is been denied by the publisers that it existed and the author does not make any comments about it.) It is also dissapeared so it is not sold any more. Greece is the epicenter of civilisation the mother of all languages and we own everything to them.

  • @niettevragen That's as may be. But Hebrew is a couple of thousand years older. It can't be based on Greek, though it's true that some lingual influence exists on both sides.

  • @lilythepink123 hebrew letters are based to greek ones

  • sorry its not the oldest music !!

    try to find ninawa music, played by an orchestra,,, that one is ancient history music since the sumerian days

  • @jehadizzz "Song of Seikilos" is the oldest COMPLETE piece of notated music in History (so far discovered, anyway). Many examples of older written music survive, but only as FRAGMENTS...

  • I love this! Can you help me find these kind of strings somewhere in the web,how are they called?

  • @haoma13 Glad you like it! A studio quailty version of this piece can now be heard on my new CD, "An Ancient Lyre" (available from cdbaby & also for download on iTunes). The lyre I am playing uses regular nylon harp strings (the local farmers may object if I tried to fashion some sheep gut strings!). For all details about this amazing lyre & all the historical info, please visit my "anientlyre" website. Thanks again for watching!

  • THE OLDEST COMPLETE PIECE OF MUSIC IN HISTORY! lollololol

  • I wrote this song.

  • That;s lovely.

  • they has no sense of rythm back then

  • @sawu101 of course they did.

  • seikilos!!!

  • large weiner package

  • it sounds so eastern

  • wow! pure hellenic sence in here,this organ was first played in Crete...This song was written from Seikilos for his wife,Efterpi's ceremony of death, the lyrics are :"While you live always shine-dont feel sorry at all-life is short-time always leads to an end.'' Hardly translated:p

  • Mporei na paiksei alloiomenes klimakes?

  • MARVELLOUS!!!!

    From Brasil!

  • he plays like an anthroposophist....

  • this is one of my favorite modes! phrygian and dorian are also spectacular =)

  • fantastic!Φαντασικό αυτο που έπαιξες αμα είσαι ελληνας και με καταλαβαίνεις τι λέω.

  • 1:50 -1:56 best!!!

  • Fantastic! It's amazing to hear ancient music as it sounded thousands of years ago.

  • also crazy

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  • There is no proof that David did any of those things. Only a couple writers claimed that.

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  • @adamatova who cares. it's about the song and the player. stick your nose in a book.

  • I would suggest you do some research before you post such nonsense - a good place to begin would be the wikipedia entry for David.

  • the very first instrument was some kind of flute, not anything with stings... The used flutes of bone long before the stoneage...

  • @verack22 it was a double flute. used with a leather strap around the head.

  • @verack22 piece of music, not instrument!

  • Your awsome at playing the lyre! I have been planning on looking for one for a while now! I hope I can be as good at playing one as you are!

  • nice job! Well done.

  • No,The fart is older..

  • Incredible- to hear the soul of those who created all of Western civilisation....

  • That was great! Every time I see it in modern notation it always seems like a strophic dance like melody (like in Grout) but your interpretation is a very cool narrative, almost epic. May I ask how you came to express it like that and did you have music or was this by feeling/improvisation, maybe both? Thank you...

  • Glad you like it! My own interpretation is a bit livlier than the dire, dirge like recordings I have heard - I found out, that "Song of Sikilos" is of a type of an ancient Greek DRINKING SONG (a "Skolion") ! I decided to treat the melody in the manner of "theme & variations" - exploring all the possible lyre playing techniques I could think of. Please check out the studio version, on my new album, "An Ancient Lyre" (available from cdbaby) -all details on my Youtube Chanel Page :o)

  • @Klezfiddle1 may I ask are you jewish? And beautiful music you play

  • Well, my surname is "Levy"! ;o) It is amazing what's in a surname - it was my very own, very ancient Levites ancestors who actually played these 10-string Biblical Lyres over 2000 years ago in the Temple of Jerusalem, to accompany the singing of the Levitical Choir...now THA'S what I call "Roots Music"!!

  • Man thats just COOL!!!

  • awesome!!

    You must to make the OST of the epic holywood films.

    Thanks for playing this music.

  • This is a Kinnor, like king David's Kinnor?

  • Yes - it is mde by Mid East Ethnic Instruments, & is based upon the design of the Kinnor depiceted on ancent Jewish coins from the Simon Bar Kochba Revolt against the Romans! For all details, please visit my "ancientlyre" website...

  • Wow. I've heard bad things about Mid East's instruments and have even experienced some of their products that were of poor quality...but this instrument sounds nice.

  • i too am an ancient soul. in my wayward goings always advancing throu the nite, never learnin basic grammar

  • ΑΞΙΟΣ

  • that is neat

  • I remember that music long time ago. This brings back memory of the past. Greek, Egyytians, Sumerians, Delphi. And from the time of David. Its remarkable I find it here in U tube.

  • My new album, "An Ancient Lyre" (soon available from Apple iTunes & cdbaby) will include my arrangement of this piece, a selection of other ancient Greek music, an improvisation on an ancient Egyptian scale and the 3400 year old "Hurrian Hymn" from Mesopotamia...

  • I am surprised by the possibility of Greeks including the 1/4 note in their music! it's either that or your fingers slipped a tiny bit... hmmmm

  • The music theory of Aristoxenus actually used 1/4notes

  • hey i didn't know that! very interesting!

    at 1:30 the full strings strumming presents an oriental scale which is called in arabic (maqam) can't recall the maqam's name though :)

  • I m not sure but maybe its ussak.But i think most eastern mediterrean cultures have pretty similar scales.And as far as I know arab people studied greek maths and arts and if it weren t the arabs we wouldnt know many things about these stuff.

  • At what exact point (mins/secs) in the video did you hear this 1/4 note??

  • Through the trevail of ages have I fought strived and perished. Many times upon a star. As if through glass yet darkley. the age old strife I see. For I have fough under many guises many names but allways ME.

  • WOOOW!!!

  • Even though this piece is so old, for some reason I can hear the Who!!! Brilliant nonetheless!!1

  • I wonder what Seikilos' mother thought of this then.....

  • The instrument, the4 stringing and the disposition are spurious. Thtuning is conjetural, as is the interprtation of the piece. Please be honest about it. We really have no definite ideas about how this mucic was played or interpreted

  • I was being honest! I already expained, in great detail in the "About htis Video" section, that this is my own personal arrangement of the melody - I used a mixtures of lyre-playing styles based on lyre playing techniques which have amazingly survived to the present, in the Krar and Simsimyya lyre players of Eritrea and Egypt.

  • Great! Try putting the lyre through some effects pedals. I think it will sound cool!

  • Check out my latest bizzarre video, "OY VEY! Don't Take THESE drugs Away!" (5 of 5)...you have inspired me here, to feed my replica 3000 year old Lyre of the Ancient Hebrews through the psychedelic flanger effects of my VOX Valvetronix guitar amp!! ;o)

  • greek music and culture is grreatt!!!!!

  • I think emperor Nero used to play like that!.

  • no toca como los de saint seiya XD

  • bEAUTIFUL!

  • It's actually a rather pretty tune too! :-)

  • What is this istrument called? I've heard it b4.

  • The lyre I am playing, is remarkably similar to the ancient Greek "Kithara" - the large wooden lyre, favoured by the professional musicians of ancient Greece. However, the actual lyre I am palying, is a replica of the "Kinnor" - the lyre of the ancient Hebrews,based on illustrations found on 1st century Jewish coins. It was once played in the Temple of Jerusalem to accompany the singing of the Levitical Choir. Check out my CD, "King David's Lyre; Echoes of Ancient Israel"...

  • Lyre

  • This music is from the Epitaf of Seikilos and is a greek music peace and is the oldest. And this man put more notes than the real but still is very beutifull.

  • dat looks hard to play

  • You talked about a cultural influence, but who do you think is influenced by whom? I never thought of the Greek Kithara, can we hear some Greek ancient harp somewhere??

    In this moment I am interested in the link between the King David's Harp and the Celtic Harp, I read some studies by John H.Wheeler. I always thought there was a mysterious link between The Celts and the Hebrew and whenever I hear gaelic it sounds like aramic or hebrew.

    Do you give lessons? You should be a teacher, really!

  • I have heard a little bit about this fascinating Irish Folk Lore - a while ago, I even had a go at uploading on Youtube, my arrangement of "Spancil Hill" on my replica ancient Hebrew lyre - the result of this "Ancient Hebrew/Celtic Fusion" was so cool, it was almost cryogenic!! ;o)

  • This reminds me of the "Oga hasu", the 1000-year-old lotus seed that was discovered at an archeological site in China, which bloomed when it was placed in water in 1952. How wonderful to hear this ancient tune brought back to beautiful life.

  • Thanks for your passion, I didn't order your cd yet, but I will...why the sound is so different between your nevel and your kinor? What kind of strings is it? Gut, Nylon or Wire, can't see well.

  • THANKS for your interest in my CD - I just wish I lived about 3000 years ago...so that I didn't have top worry about selling albums of ancient lyre music during the current ecconomic global meltdown!! The strings are unfortunately nylon (although they stay in tune better than gut would do)& the Kinnor sounds different, as its soundboard is of wood, whereas my nevel has a soundboard of taut skin...similar to the ancient Greek "Lyra" (which had a skin soundboard stretched over a tortoise shell)

  • Aha...it is true that nylon strings has this advantage of keeping the tune better than gut strings, but originally were the nevel and the kinnor gut-strung? If I am right, the nevel has 12 strings whereas the kinnor has 10, do these numbers have a significant meaning in the gematria? Thanks

  • We know from the writings of Josephus Flavius, who actually witnessed the ancient Temple Service, that the Nevel lyre had 12 strings & the Kinnor Lyre had 10...the sum of these numbers of strings, 10 strings for the Kinnor & 12 strings for the Nevel, totals 22 - the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet...coincidence, or Kabbalistic, mystical significance??! The Nevel is a bit of a mystery due to lack of pictorial evidence. It may have been a skin-membraned lyre, or a 12 string lyre-harp...

  • Also, we know from Josephus Flavius, that the strings of the Nevel & Kinnor were made from sheep gut. It is fascinating how similar the Kinnor is to the ancient Greek Kithara, & I'm sure there must be some ancient cross-cultural influence...even their names are similar! If the Nevel was indeed a membrane lyre, it may have influenced the design of the ancient Greek "Lyra" - the lyre with a skin-membrane stretched over a toroise shell??

  • :-)

  • I'm curious, how do you know that this was written in diatonic genus and not one of the other ancient Greek genera (chromatic or enharmonic)? I know you state that "as ancient Greek musical notation goes, the pitch is unambiguous - alphabetical letters denoting the pitch were written directly above the words of the text", but are you certain that these notated pitches were in diatonic genus? In my reading of Aristoxenus it seems that it is possible to interpret the signs for pitches differently.

  • Thank you very much for being interested in this music. I read somewhere that there was much improvisation in ancient Greek music, and that's what you're doing.

  • These are the lyrics in ancient Greek according to wikipedia. It's mindblowing to think how little we've changed as people in the last 2.5 millennia and the language is still so close to Modern Greek... So, as I said, here are the lyrics:

    Hoson zēs, phainou

    Mēden holōs sy lypou;

    Pros oligon esti to zēn

    To telos ho chronos apaitei

    Translation into English:

    While you live, shine

    Don't suffer anything at all;

    Life exists only a short while

    And time demands its toll.

  • awsome

  • Actually the oldest know music( vocal) was made in the vedic culture.

  • How do you know the age of this music and how was it recorded?

  • Just do a Google image search of "Song of Seikilos" - you clearly can see the ancient Greek alphabetical musical notation inscribed above the text of the song on the ancient Greek burial stele...which is known to date between c.200BCE - 100CE

  • i guess it was not recorded, it was written

  • ROCK ON!!!

    >:D

  • now is that the oldest in the west or the east?

  • In the world.

  • This song is only the oldest COMPLETE piece of music to have survived from ancient Greece, which has so far discovered...there are much older, incomplete fragments of notated music from all over the world - check out my arrangement on Youtube, of the 3400 year old "Hurrian Hymn" from Syria!

  • Thank you so much for your art! God bless your heart!!!!!

  • Thank you! My 2 albums of ancient, mystical lyre music, "King David's Lyre; Echoes of Ancient Israel" & my latest album, "Lyre of the Levites" are available from cdbaby. Individual tracks from my first album are also now avilable to download from both Apple iTunes & Amazon MP3 Store...

  • What are the strings made from? Nylon? Real gut? .... Gorgeous sound! I love history. You're a great historian, in my opinion, it really seems.

  • The strings are nylon, but with my amazing VOX Valetronix Guitar Amp, I try and tweak the sound to a more mellow gut string sound, with a bit of added "etherial" reverb! To hear what this lyre sounds like when professionally recorded in the studio, check out my debut CD of mystical lyre music - it is available anywhere in the world, at just $10.99 until the end of January! Please visit my Youtube Channel Page for details on how to order a copy :o)

  • i have herd and it is amazing the sound its incredible -

  • I haven't heard a lyre live so far. Does it reallysound so haunting or has the sound been modified by the uploading?

  • For all my Youtube videos, I simply attach a regular Leem Acoustic Guitar pickup to the bridge of the lyre, and connected this to my VOX Valetronix guitar amp...which creates a lovely warm valve tone (plus a little reverb - for that "etherial" effect!).Check out what this amazing lyre sounds like when professionally recorded in the studio, in my debut album of solo lyre music, "King David's Lyre; Echoes of Ancient Israel"! Individual tracks from my album can now be downloaded from iTunes.

  • It sounds amazing.

    Thanks for the reply!

  • this song we fill of peace...

  • It seems...like a...a guitar!! isn't it?

  • Quite right - infact, the word "Kithara" now means "guitar" in modern Greek! The lyre was literally the "guitar of the ancient world". Besides having a wooden resonator very similar to the modern acoustic guitar, exactly the same guitar-like tones can be produced on my Kithara-style lyre, with this combination of plectrum-plucked & finger-plucked tones. The lyre is just SO much more versatile than the harp!

  • Amazing... So is the guitar as we know it today an evolution of the lyre??It seems much more difficult to play than an Harp. And what about the piano?? I heard that his origins are in Africa, but a piano is just...an harp played in a different way