THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT GREECE: "SONG OF SEIKILOS" c.100BC
A studio quality recording of "Song of Seikilos" can be downloaded from my album, "An Ancient Lyre":http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/mlevy4 (also now available from Apple iTunes).
This video features my arrangement for solo lyre, "The Song of Seikilos", unique in musical history, as it is the only piece of music from antiquity in the entire Western world, that has SO far been found, which has survived in its COMPLETE form, and unlike much earlier surviving fragments of melodies that have been found, this song is written in a totally unambiguous ALPHABETICAL musical notation, which can be played, note for note, as it was written...2000 YEARS AGO:
http://www.amaranthpublishing.com/Son...
This melody is an amazing musical legacy from ancient Greece; a precious remnant of a long-forgotten musical culture now forever lost in the mists of time...
It is written in the ancient Greek "Hypophrygian" mode; the equivelant intervals as heard in a scale of G-G played on the white notes of the piano. (This mode confusingly has exactly the same intervals as heard in the MEDIEVAL "Mixolydian" mode -the ORIGINAL ancient GREEK "Mixolydian" mode, was, in fact, B-B!).
Due to a misinterpretation of the Latin texts of Boethius, mediaeval modes were given the wrong Greek names! For the CORRECT names of the ORIGINAL ancient Greek modes, see:
http://www.harmonics.com/lucy/lsd/cor...
For more fascinating details of what the great ancient Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle had to say about the musical modes, please see this fascinating link:
http://www.pathguy.com/modes.htm
This is my second arrangement of the song on Youtube - my other version used a lyre similar to the ancient Greek "Kithara"; the large wooden lyre favoured by the professional musicians of ancient Greece.
The arrangement in this video of this ancient melody, uses a lyre tonally similar to the ancient Greek Lyra - the lyre depicted on countless ancient Greek vases, which was made from a tortoise shell, with a soundboard of taut animal hide stretched across it; unfortunately, I couldn't find ANY pet store who would loan me a tortoise for the purpose of TOTAL authenticity!!;o)
The skin-membraned lyra, therefore, could almost be described as "a banjo without a fingerboard"! Regarding this striking similarity between the ancient Greek Lyra and the contemporary American banjo, please see my other "musical" experiments on Youtube, of playing ancient Greek music - ON A BANJO:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-fu4-Qo...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHXZ8Z...
The "Lyra" was favoured more for domestic use, rather than the larger, more versatile wooden Kithara of the professional ancient Greek musician.
In this version, I have tried to utilize EVERY conceivable lyre-playing technique I could think of, which may have also been used in Antiquity! This includes experimenting with "string blocking" at the beginning (blocking certain notes to form chords with the left hand to enable rhythm to be strummed on the lyre; just as on a guitar!), alternating between finger-plucked and plectrum plucked tones, the use of basic harmony below the melodic line, a touch of improvisation between phrases and plenty of tremolos & glissando's...in order to inject some NEW life into this beautiful ancient melody...
This is a more lively rendition than some of the "dire dirge-like" renditions of the song I have heard on some older recordings of it - I have recently learnt that "The Song of Sekilos" is, in fact a DRINKING SONG!(What a GREAT idea of the ancient Greeks to put a drinking song on a TOMBSTONE - I want one to be on MINE!!). The ancient Greek term for a drinking song like this was called a "Skolion".
Although much older music has been found (& which I have had a go at recreating on some of my other "Musical Adventures in Time Travel" heard on Youtube), all that remains are either just pitiful fragments of the melodies, or the way the melodies have been notated in ancient times have SO many modern interpretations that the actual melody is still mostly academic guess work.
About 2000 years after it was written, this melody was rediscovered in 1883, in its complete & original form. It was found inscribed in marble on an ancient Greek burial stele, bearing the following epitaph: "I am a portrait in stone. I was put here by Seikilos, where I remain forever, the symbol of timeless remembrance".
The timeless words of the song are:
"Hoson zes, phainou
Meden holos su lupou;
Pros oligon esti to zen
To telos ho chronos apaitei"
Translation - "While you live, shine
Don't suffer anything at all;
Life exists only a short while
And time demands its toll"
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