Rediscovering Ancient Greek Music: A performance reconstructs the past

Music was ubiquitous in Ancient Greece. Now we can hear how it actually sounded. A short documentary directed by Mike Tomlinson.

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Much of what we think of as Ancient Greek poetry, including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, was composed to be sung, frequently with the accompaniment of musical instruments. And while the Greeks left modern classicists many indications that music was omnipresent in society – from vases decorated with lyres, to melodic notation preserved on stone – the precise character and contours of the music has long been considered irreproducible. However, the UK Classicist and classical musician Armand D’Angour has spent years endeavouring to stitch the mysterious sounds of Ancient Greek music back together from large and small hints left behind. In 2017, his work culminated in a unique performance at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, intended to recreate the sounds of Greek music dating as far back as Homer’s era – roughly 700 BCE. This short documentary details the extraordinary research and musical expertise that made the concert possible, revealing remarkable sounds once thought lost to time. To learn more about what music sounded like in Ancient Greece, read D’Angour’s Aeon idea: https://aeon.co/ideas/can-we-know-wha...

Director: Mike Tomlinson
Producer: Hannah Veale, James Tomalin

#ancientgreece #history #greekmusic