David Creese of the University of Newcastle plays an ancient Greek song taken from stone inscriptions constructed on an eight-string "canon" (a small stringed instrument) with movable bridges. (Audio file is ©BBC)
Music is a part of human nature, and evidence of musical instruments shows up consistently in the archaeological record. We can track the first flute-like instrument all the way back to the Neanderthals. The ancient Greeks played their music on stringed instruments like a zither or the lyre as well as reed pipes, and percussion mediums. We know about the use of some of these obsolete instruments through descriptions from ancient texts, paintings, and archaeological remains. In fact, most famous Greek plays like Homer's epic poem The Odyssey, were essentially musicals meant to be sung with some normal speech interjected in. But could these records allow us to go back in time and hear ancient music as it was demonstrated thousands of years ago?
Recently, new revelations about ancient Greek and Egyptian music have been deciphered from several ancient documents and stone inscriptions written around 450 B.C. On the stone carvings, many known Greek songs and poems are inscribed with notations assigning vocal ranges to lyrics with a simple letter scale. For instance, "A" would represent words sung at the top of the musical scale, so therefore "N" would represent a musical note halfway down the scale, and so forth. Absolute pitch can then be figured out from the vocal ranges noted on the ancient stone. The Egyptians also left us similar notations rediscovered on ancient papyrus documents, recovered from burial tombs. In fact, the Egyptian documents and some of the ancient Greek documents were published as early as 1581. Nobody knew how to read ancient Egyptian in 1581, and archaeological evidence for the ancient Greeks, at that time, was limited. Until the known examples were augmented by new finds in recent decades, we had no chance of deciphering their ancient melodies. But with these new finds, many research projects funded by notable institutions have embarked on a journey to bring this music back to life.
So what did ancient Greek music sound like?
Listen below to a song written by the Greek poet Seikilos, played by Dr. David Creese, using Ptolemy's 2nd Century A.D. precise mathematical ratios for scale-tunings.
The words of the song can be translated to:
While you're alive, shine:The composition is distinct because it marks the regular rhythmic beat, and demonstrates that the ancient Greek voice went up in pitch on certain syllables and fell on others. Noting an important principle in the ancient Greek language in which the accents indicate pitch not stress, unlike the English language. Despite the differences in our speech, the music is surprisingly similar to what you might hear coming out of a modern day music box.
never let your mood decline.
We've a brief span of life to spend:
Time necessitates an end.
Listen to Waltz of the Flowers, by Tchaikovsky, and Greensleeves, by King Henry VIII below, and compare for yourself: (tip: listen to the ancient Greek song before each example)
http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/musicboxattic/Greensleeves.mp3
Not an exact match, but eerily similar. Another example of a somewhat similar tune from a more recent era is Chopin's Nocturne in C sharp:
The ancient song even sounds reminiscent of some Christmas songs, like O Come, All Ye Faithful, written in the 1700's:
Do you recognize a song that sounds similar? Let me know in the comment section below.
Here are some more compositions emulating ancient Greek music:
Listen in as University of Vermont classics professor John C. Franklin uses electric keyboards and recordings to recreate ancient sounds:
http://archive.burlingtonfreepress.com/videonetwork/2474835986001/What-did-ancient-Greek-music-sound-like-
Here is an idea of how ancient Egyptian music could have sounded:
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