Hymn to the Muse - Ancient Greek Song

Lyrics & music by Mesomedes of Crete (disputed by some), arrangement & vocals by Farya Faraji. Many thanks to Luke Ranieri of the polýMATHY and ScorpioMartianus channels for helping out with the pronunciation.

This is one of the few preserved songs written down in Antiquity, during the Roman Imperial rule. It is generally attributed to Mesomedes of Crete, a 2nd century Greek musician who left us with an array of compositions, who, for a long time, were the only known compositions from Antiquity, before the discovery of other ones like the Epitaph of Seikilos. This song being Mesomedes’ is, however disputed by J.G. Landels, who points out how this particular composition stands out in style from the rest of Mesomedes’ works, especially due to the use of Ionian, rather than Doric dialect.

The arrangement is meant to be historically accurate, and follows the heterophonic/monophonic logic of Ancient Greek music, where a single musical line exists without any counterpoint or harmony (independent melodic structures occurring simultaneously with the lead melody). The instrumentation consists of ancient lyres, aulos, drums and ancient cymbals. The melody is interesting in that it shows a copious use of chromaticism, something that will remain integral to later Greek music, including Byzantine chant of the Middle-Ages, as well as modern Greek music.

The pronunciation system used is the Samosatene variant of the Lucian pronunciation, a pronunciation system devised by Raphael Turrigiano & Luke Ranieri which strives to be an optimal pronunciation system for Ancient Greek, mostly for the Koine Greek of the era of Roman rule. Given that it was devised around the era of the 2nd century, I believed it to be the most applicable pronunciation system as Mesomedes himself lived around that time period. Of course, the pronunciations would have varied immensely across regions and dialects, as represented by the many variants of Lucian, but for the sake of convenience, I chose to go with Samosatene. A more in depth explanation of the phonological system can be found in this introductory video by Ranieri and Turrigiano which I highly recommend you check out:    • Lucian Pronunciation of Ancient Greek...  

The clip was filmed in the Peloponnese and the Cycladic island of Sifnos.

Lyrics in Ancient Greek:
Ἄειδε μοῦσά μοι φίλη,
μολπῆς δ’ ἐμῆς κατάρχου·
αὔρη δὲ σῶν ἀπ’ ἀλσέων
ἐμὰς φρένας δονείτω.

English translation:
Sing to me, kind Muse,
and begin my song.
Send a breeze from your groves
to stir my mind.