2nd century

Ancient Greek Music - "Hymn To The Muse" (2nd Century CE)

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• published: 05 Feb 2010
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This video features my arrangement for solo lyre, of "HYMN TO THE MUSE" - a hauntingly beautiful surviving fragment of the mostly lost music of ancient Greece. This piece was written almost 2000 years ago, by Mesomedes of Crete... Mesomedes of Crete was a Greek lyric poet and composer of the early 2nd century AD. More information can be found at: http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Bios/Mesomedes.html It is written in the ancient Greek "Dorian" mode; E-E on the white note of the piano - not to be confused with the MEDIEVAL "Dorian" mode, which was D-D! Due to a misinterpretation of the Latin texts of Boethius, mediaeval modes were given the wrong Greek names! For the CORRECT names of the ORIGINAL ancient Greek modes, see: http://www.harmonics.com/lucy/lsd/corrections.html For what Plato & Aristotle themselves had this to say about these ancient musical modes, please see this fascinating link: http://www.pathguy.com/modes.htm The translation of this ancient, 2000 or more year old song (which mercifully, I am NOT going to attempt to sing!), are as follows: 'Sing for me, dear Muse, begin my tuneful strain; a breeze blow from your groves to stir my listless brain...Skillful Calliope, leader of the delightful Muses, and you, skillful priest of our rites, son of Leto, Paean of Delos, be at my side'. (translation by J. G. Landels). It is played here on a lyre strikingly similar to the ancient Greek Kithara; the large wooden 7 string lyre favoured by the professional musicians of ancient Greece. The lyre I am playing is very imilar to the ancient Greek "Lyra" - the lyre with a resonator of a tortoise shell, over which a taut leather skin acted as the soundboard over which the strings were stretched...it was virtually a banjo without a finger board! I have also uloaded this piece performed on a lyre more similar to the ancient Greek Kithara - the large wooden lyre favoured by the professonal musicians of ancient Greece. This piece is more difficult to play on this lyre, as unlike my other Kithara-like lyre, the strings are not regular harp strings and so are not colour coded - this entails counting the intervals whilst playing in order to find the right notes in this very tricky piece! The most challenging aapect of playing this piece, is attempting to play the many accidententals required by the melody - on a DIATONICALLY tuned lyre...WITHOUT the aid of any fancy sharpening pedals, which are to be found on almost all modern harps! It The ancient Greeks managed to get around this by a technique I have been working on, called "finger-stopping" - an accidental can be played, by increasing the pitch of a lyre string by a semitone; this is achieved by pressing the string (about a centimeter in from the tuning peg), with a nail of the finger of the left hand which then acts as a fret against the string, shortening its vibrating length, and therefore increases the pitch of the note the string produces. Regarding the accidentals used in this piece, another fascinating similarity between ancient Greek music & ancient Jewish music can directly be heard - when the 3rd of the ancient Greek Dorian mode (E-E)is SHARPENED, this creates a scale which is IDENTICAL to the Jewish "Ahava Raba" mode (which still can be heard in 90% of Jewish Klezmer music today...including the most famous of all Jewish songs; "Hava Nagila"!): E,F,G#,A,B,C,D,E To hear this wonderful fragment of ancient Greek music sang and played on authentic replica ancient Greek instruments, please see the amazing upload on Youtube by Michael Atherton & Melismos: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=piYpvpBgwRs My Albums of Ancient Lyre Music are available, anywhere in the world, from iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/michael-levy/id4324920 They are also available from Amazon MP3 Store: http://amzn.to/eyI34H Also, my 3 CD albums, "King David's Lyre; Echoes of Ancient Israel", "An Ancient Lyre" & "Lyre of the Levites" are available anywhere in the world from CD Baby: http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/MichaelLevy For full details, and all the historical research behind my myriad of "Musical Adventures in Time Travel", please visit my official website: http://www.ancientlyre.com Many thanks for watching!