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Disc 1:- Akousate/Argos
- Melomai
- Sappho
- Eros
- Mater
- Nomos M
- Tenge Pleumonas Oino
- Dithyrambos
- Gaia
- Daktylos Amera
- Makrotatos
- Anakreon
- Perikleitos
- Agallis
- Dialogos
- Mona
- Protos
- Ekleipsis
- Proteron
- Hypne Anax
- Kretikos
Buyer Reviews
Average Buyer Rating:
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outside the souvlaki box
not your "never on sunday" style music. some very unique sounds, melodies and chords. enjoy as you read the fagles' homer trnslations.
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Highly enjoyable for all.
I enthusiastically recommend this recording to everyone, regardless of your musicological expertise. The novelty and variety of the music should be enough to draw in all but the most desensitized of the mainstream audience, and after repeated listenings a depth of enthusiastic musicianship is exposed. The mood ranges from the excruciatingly delicate lyre, falsetto, and chimes to the forcefully rhythmic hand-drums, shakers and (my personal favorite) the wooden double auloi that pack all the punch of a distortion guitar.
If, on the other hand, you are a bit of a scholar, this will please all but the most slavish positivist. This is not interpretation N of the Seikilos epitaph, and in fact I don't believe the notational fragments are at all represented on this recording. [It really shouldn't be attributed to "Ancient Greek Anonymous."] There are, however, rigorously-researched reconstructions of period instruments and relatively virtuosic performances. The melodies have been composed with a thorough appreciation for the greek vocal aesthetic, taking into account the tonality, rhythm and accent of the language and the fundamentally syllabic nature of ancient greek art song. Also well-represented is the "epicentric" melodic paradigm inherited from Sumeria, gravitating toward the central string, "mese".
My only disappointment is the lack of harmonic variety. The entire CD is performed in the diatonic genus (without even variations of chroma, unfortunately). In their defense, I admit that to modern ears the chromatic genus can sound like very bad jazz, and the enharmonic genus is (just as Plato said) prohibitively difficult for most singers. I sincerely hope this ensemble will explore them in future recordings. Nonetheless, this is most certainly not equal-tempered music, with an unmistakable, exciting "microtonal" spice.
I have owned this recording for a year, and it is one of my absolute favorites.
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Reconstructing the beauty of a Symposium
The first remark concerns the instruments of this music, instruments that have been reconstituted on the model of the ancient ones. We will consider them as germanely faithful and they create sounds, a sound environment or ambience that is particularly original. The second remark is that this music is based on the pythagorian five-note scale (note Conrad Steinmann does not mention this pythagorian origin and the physical process used to determine the first five degrees based on vibrations, from C to G, but this process fails for A and B : these last two notes will be regulated and introduced in the scale only in the Renaissance) that corresponds to the first five degrees of our modern major scale. Then a second group of these five degrees and intervals are added to the first five in a second identical group constituting a ten-note scale that will be the basis of all western music up to the Renaissance, and thus the basis of all Christian sacred music of the Middle Ages, a music known as gregorian. So, in the surprising sound ambience we also recognize some elements we have already heard and enjoyed in our heritage. The next choice is to reconstitute the music of a symposium, a banquet with musical entertainment for free Athenian citizens, though there were no un-free citizens : it corresponds then to the extremely small minority of the people in Athens and ancient Greece who had civil rights because they were free. This music is based on texts from the poets of the time singing love and wine, the pleasures of love and wine and then the disruptive alienating impact of love. Finally the music itself is reconstituted from the tidbits that have survived, the accents, stresses and intonations of the language itself, and what we can know of the status of music in this free social elite. The result is very surprising. We will first mention the voices : only a (female) soprano and a/n (male) alto. This is a little bit too restrictive and it reduces the male voice to a very particular case. The music brings up some Mediterranean styles that will develop later on in Europe with medieval music and in the Arab world. We can hear some oriental passages, for instance in track # 9, ? Gaia ?. I will mention track # 18 on the sun eclipse of April 8, 648 B.C. that has a sombre depth created by the contrast between the soprano and the alto, and track # 20, ? Hypne Anax ?, in which the alto develops in his solo a vocal texture that is absolutely unexpected.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Universit? Paris Dauphine, Universit? Paris I Panth?on Sorbonne
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CD-Hypothesis
Lyrics and the instruments on this record are authentic. Music is composed by Conrad Steinmann. So it is contemporary "newly imagined" music in Ancient Greek style.
His reconstruction based on 2 main sources: 1. careful re-creation of the instruments, which helps to understand playing techinc; 2. Ancient Greek language, because "Ancient Greek is subject to rhythmical rules that regulate the lengh of the syllables...[These rules were] reconciled with tonal order of the respective instrument".
The result of this re-construction could be described in one word - beautiful!
Arianna Savall (soprano) so beautifully sings well-known lyrics by Sappho ("He Seems to Me Like Unto Gods That Man Who Sits Opposite You", "Eros Shook My Heart") and Anacreon, Alcaios so you could buy this CD only to understand how beautiful and melodic was Ancient Greek language.
As example, many sources stated that verses by Sappho were sung and these songs seemed to Ancient Greeks very melodic, delicate and beautiful. And when you are reading modern translation or even original - you have to have great imagination to understand this musical aspect of the poetry.
Here you have original lyrics, English translation and the singing, so this CD could be a kind of the textbook for the student-historian of the Antiquty.
This CD-hypothesis could be also viewed not only as academic experiment but also as best CD of New Age World music in Ancient Greek style.
Well, and if you are decided to buy this CD, why not to listen to authenitic Ancient Greek music?
I highly recommend you CDs by ENSEMBLE DE ORGANOGRAPHIA "Music of Ancient Greeks" and "Music of the Ancient Sumerians, Egyptians and Greeks" (North Pacific Music)!!!!
P.S. To compare different approaches to performance of the Antique music - try also European CDs - search the Web -
Annie Belis and Ensemble Kerylos "Ancient Greek Music" (label K617)
Musica Romana "Mesomedes" and "Symphonia Panica" (label Emmuty Records)