THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT GREECE!

This video features my arrangement for solo lyre of a fascinating piece called "THRENOS" - which can possibly be attributed to the ancient Greek poet Simonides, c.400BC!!

I heard this truly haunting fragment of ancient Greek music on a tantalizing clip I heard, of a CD recording of ancient Greek music by Petros Tabouris...

All of my own 9 albums of mystical, ancient lyre music are now available from iTunes...

1)"An Ancient Lyre": http://bit.ly/dhCozi

2)"King David's Lyre; Echoes of Ancient Israel":
http://bit.ly/9PCIua




3)"The Ancient Biblical Lyre": http://bit.ly/9hTDje

4)"Lyre of the Levites": http://bit.ly/9baWuM

5)"Apollo's Lyre": http://bit.ly/dhCozi

6)"Ancient Times -- Music of The Ancient World": http://bit.ly/aRF5PD

7)"The Ancient Greek Modes": http://bit.ly/cZks0o

8)"The Ancient Greek Lyre": http://bit.ly/bxO7Ra

9)"Ancient Visions -- New Compositions for an Ancient Lyre": http://bit.ly/dCPmRN

Physical CDs are also available anywhere in the world from CD Baby, for 3 of my best selling albums:

"An Ancient Lyre": http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/mlevy4

"King David's Lyre; Echoes of Ancient Israel":
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/mlevy

"Lyre of the Levites": http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/mlevy2

For full details about my albums of lyre music, and the fascinating ancient historical background, please visit my official website:

http://www.ancientlyre.com

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[nr900]

Wow thats a great instrument. And a very interesting mode.

[SUNIL007G]

nice

[TimisMcl0vin]

I'm currently attempting to transcribe this for classical guitar.

[TimisMcl0vin]

This is truly amazing. Do you know if there are any transcriptions of this and where I could get it?

[rakkav]

You HAD to ask! :) Take a look at Dr. Anne Kilmer's table of Babylonian tuning cycles on my Web page, "Sacred Music in Antiquity" for a clue. To create ANY OTHER MODE possible in diatonic-chromatic tonality, one need only raise one or more of the degrees in the E-E' mode by a half step, through a cycle or otherwise. Starting with C-C' would require raising and/or lowering some strings eventually, as would starting with other modes.

[Klezfiddle1]

Why, of all the other possible starting notes, is E in particular, the ideal starting point for tuning modes?

[rakkav]

The "Sounds from the Past" conference in Jerusalem in January was all about such exchanges. Ancient Mesopotamia influenced everybody in the area and vice versa.

Once it was discovered that the "mode of E" was the ideal starting point for tuning modes, it was no great leap to create "mixed modes" where one or more degrees were augmented to form chromatic intervals. EFG#ABCDE, EF#GABCD#E, EF#GA#BCD#E, EF#G#ABCD#E - these are among the most common, in and out of SHV's "biblical chant".

[Klezfiddle1]

At last - I understand! I have updated this in the "about this video" details. I am fascinated by the similarity between the ancient Greek Dorian mode(EFGABCDE),and the Jewish "Ahava Raba" mode - the ONLY difference, is that the 3rd is sharpened in the Jewish scale: EFG#ABCDE.Possibly this is evidence of some ancient exchange of musical ideas??

[rakkav]

On the ancient documents, it's best to look up references such as Sachs et al.; no way could I summarize the sources here, even if I knew more than a few! On notation, that's the problem: there WERE no rhythmic signs in either of the 2 notations. Rhythm must be inferred from melody vis-a-vis a text or else the standard Greek metrical feet; and sometimes it's easier to do this than at other times.

[Klezfiddle1]

On the theme of the alphabetic system of ancient greek musical notation, am I right in thinking there were 2 such systems, one for vocal, the other for instrumental music?How was rhythm notated in the instrumental alphabetical notation, when it obviously could not be infered from the syllables of the text of a song, as in the vocal alphabetical musical notation?