08 Orestes Fragment Dance Remix Part Two

07 Orestes Fragment Dance Remix Part One

Same technique as Lysander of Sicyon 1, but this time with the mixolydian recorded in Aristides Quintilianus. A.Q. presents this in terms of quarter-tones, but some of these I have adjusted to lesser resonant relations (for the concept, see "Hearing Greek Microtones"). This follows the observation made by Winnington-Ingram ("The Intervals of Greek Music") in relation to Aristoxenus, i.e. that A's tone fractions actually conceal such relations as 5:4, 6:5, 7:6 etc. as known already to Archytas.

06 Lysander of Sicyon2

Second century B.C.E. Inscribed on Athenian treasury at Delphi. This remarkable piece begins in an archaizing style which harks back to the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., as known from Aristoxenus' discussion (in Pseudo Plutarch De musica) of the traditional libation music which was associated by fourth century musicians with the legendary aulete Olympus. There follows a section of the fully developed Hellenistic art music which grew from innovations of the late fifth century (the so-called New Music). In this track I have aimed for a reasonable degree of historical plausibility. The lyre tunings in the opening sections incorporate the enharmonic of Archytas.

05 Athenaeus Paian

No melody survives for this famous poem. But the ancient rhythm is preserved in the words' long and short syllables (though I have regularized the indeterminate positions in the first part of this 'Aeolic' structure). I then sing the accents according to the tendencies observable in many of the musical fragments. The pitchset I used forms part of the Mixolydian harmonia (as recorded by Aristides Quintilianus), to acknowledge to tradition reported in a fragment of Aristoxenus, that Sappho was its 'first inventor' (I mean, what the hell right?). The whole thing is set to a Rai or Bollywood accompaniment, suggesting either the Near Eastern dimension of ancient Greek music and/or its Indo-European heritage (LOL).

04 Sappho Hymn to Aphrodite

Lysander is mentioned in ancient sources as the pioneer of virtuosic solo kithara playing. He seems to have used a range of showy techniques, including overtones and microtonal shadings. I recently took a sandouri improvisation from the brilliant collection Aiolis Lesbos; made a "MIDI score" of it by using waveform-editing to identify the precise attacks of each note; inserted corresponding MIDI notes in the Protools sequencer; compressed this material from a four-octave range to a seventh, eliminating
￼￼￼￼￼￼￼￼￼￼￼￼￼￼file:///Users/jfrankli/Documents/WebsiteFolder/AncGreekMusicFragments.html Page 1 of 4
John Curtis Franklin - Cyprosyrian Girl Ancient Greek Music Fragments 5/1/15, 8:03 AM
playback, and looping. Also presented will be a
“virtual lyre” I have developed to reproduce
precise microtonal measurements preserved in
ancient sources; here ancient musical instinct
may be resurrected more purely, without the
intrusion of the modern aesthetic. The sound
palette includes ancient fragments, microtones,
samples of reconstructed instruments,
ethnomusicological collections, and rhythmic
gestures ‘transcribed’ precisely from modern
Greek folk music. By placing known ancient
material in diachronic dialogue with contemporary
music, and/or synchronic dialogue with other
ancient sources, one can produce music which,
when not authentic, is both musically effective
and has an appealing historical dimension of its
own. The goal has been to fill the gap between
certainty and ignorance with material which is
not entirely arbitrary, but sympathetic to, and
sometimes cognate with, an authentically ancient
nucleus.
accidentals and 'rotating' the scale to put
the most frequent notes on scale degree four
(= mes_); used the resulting MIDI data to
'drive' a digital sample of a reconstructed
kithara which was tuned via the Virtual Lyre
to the diatonic of Archytas. It has thus the
living gestures of traditional Greek folk
music, with authentically ancient intervals.
The connection with Lesbos is also nice, given
the importance of the island and its
kitharodes in the Archaic period.

03 Lysander of Sicyon 1

These are the audio examples to my paper “Hearing Greek Microtones”, in Hagel, S./Harrauer, Ch. (eds.), Ancient Greek Music in Performance. Wiener Studien Beiheft 29 (Vienna, 2005), 9–50: https://www.academia.edu/7860981/_Hearing_Greek_Microtones_in_Hagel_S._Harrauer_Ch._eds._Ancient_Greek_Music_in_Performance._Wiener_Studien_Beiheft_29_Vienna_2005_9_50

Audio Example 22: Ptolemy Even Diatonic

Audio Example 12: Epicentric Etudes

Audio Example 12: Chromatic Didymus

Audio Example 8: Archytas Enharmonic

Audio Example 6: Ditone Vs 5:4 third

Audio Example 5: Aristoxenus Experiment

Audio Example 4: Pythagorean Diatonic

Audio Example 3: Two Oscillators playing resonant intervals

Audio Example 2: Lyre Overtones

Audio Example 1: The Harmonic Series

Choral songs and incidental lyre music from 2001 production at the American Academy in Rome

Selection 2: Parodos (strophe)

Selection 1: Opening incidental music

2001 production at the American Academy in Rome, directed by Dan Robb/David Mowat. Audio of full production. Translation by Charles Connaghan and John C. Franklin. Cast:

Strepsiades - Benji Ming
Pheidippides - Tim Younger
Xanthias - Gareth Barton
Student - Susan Coleman
Socrates - Paul McCue
Chorus Leader - Helen MacGregor
Clouds - Brigid Allen, Lucy Baker, Jackie Chang,
Susan Coleman
Aristophanes - Tim Younger
Right Argument - Gareth Barton
Wrong Argument - Brigid Allen
Creditor 1 - Brigid Allen
Creditor 2 - Gareth Barton

Aristophanes Clouds (Full Production)

Each track is a 100% analog, single-take, live improvisation using modular synthesis, analog sequencers, tape delays, and a few polyphonic synths. No overdubs, except the vocals on Ganymede. Each track is named for one of Jupiter's moons (partly because I was using Moon sequencers and a Roland Jupiter 8).

GanymedeV5

Callirhoe

Kinnaru1

Metis

Early second century A.D. Mesomedes was a court composer to Hadrian. In my realization I have tried to evoke the military bands inspired throughout the Near East by the Neo-Assyrian machine (see "A Feast of Music"), like the Lydian ensemble, described by Herodotus, which accompanied Alyattes' march against Smyrna, and consisting of harps, bass and treble pipes (auloi), and panpipes. I have added drums because this seems to have been an Assyrian practice. The crowd in the background is itself a piece of music archaeology, coming from G. Lawson's classic "Sounds of the Roman World". It might be imagined as the local, angry Greek audience whom Alyattes deported en masse after destroying Smyrna. Nemesis herself hovers above Herodotus' moralizing account of the rise and fall of Lydia.

01 Hymn To Nemesis

This is largely a cover, performed on ancient instruments, of the rembetiko classic Frankosyriani by Markos Bambakaris. Rembetiko was born from the fusion of Athenian working-class music and that of Ionian Greeks expelled by the Turks in 1922 after the Greco-Turkish War. The situation is paralleled in antiquity by the Persian conquest of Ionia, which spurred an Ionian exodus and consequently an Ionian fashion in Athens, the most conspicuous leader of which was Anacreon. Similarly, at the end of the Late Bronze Age, Mycenaeans seem to have emigrated in large numbers to Cyprus, where they eventually took on characteristics of the indigenous population. My realization takes that situation as its background, and transposes the place names of Bambakaris to 12th century Cyprus, Cilicia and Ugarit. The distortion on the voice is an allusion to the poor quality of Bambakaris' original recording in the 1920s The greeting of the singer by a female admirer is a typical feature of early rembetiko recordings; the jew's harp (cosi detto) is also not unknown.

02 The Cyprosyrian Girl

Exploration of Europa, one of Jupiter's moon. Single-take, live improv, 100% analog. 

slymoonbeast

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