Ancient Music

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Ancient music is music that developed in literate cultures, replacing prehistoric music.

Ancient music refers to the various musical systems that were developed across various geographical regions such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, India, China, Greece and Rome (see music of Mesopotamia, Greek music, Roman music). Ancient music is designated by the characterization of the basic audible tones and scales. It may have been transmitted through oral or written systems.

Now, obviously, there is no way of knowing how ancient Greek or Roman music sounded, but there are artists that managed to make their music sound credible enough...

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Ancient Greek musicians developed their own robust system of musical notation. The system was not widely used among Greek musicians, but nonetheless a modest corpus of notated music remains from Ancient Greece and Rome. The epics of Homer were originally sung with instrumental accompaniment, but no notated melodies from Homer are known. Several complete songs exist in ancient Greek musical notation. The Seikilos epitaph is the oldest surviving complete musical composition from the Greek tradition or from any tradition. Three complete hymns by Mesomedes of Crete (2nd century CE) exist in manuscript. In addition, many fragments of Greek music are extant, including fragments from tragedy, among them a choral song by Euripides for his Orestes and an instrumental intermezzo from Sophocles' Ajax. Romans did not have their own system of musical notation, but a few Romans apparently learned the Greek system. A line from Terence's Hecyra was set to music and possibly notated by his composer Flaccus.

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It has always been known that some ancient music was not strictly monophonic. Some fragments of Greek music, such as the Orestes fragment, clearly call for more than one note to be sounded at the same time. Greek sources occasionally refer to the technique of playing more than one note at the same time. In addition, double pipes, such as used by the Greeks and Persians, and ancient bagpipes, as well as a review of ancient drawings on vases and walls, etc., and ancient writings (such as in Aristotle, Problems, Book XIX.12) which described musical techniques of the time, all indicate harmony existed. One pipe in the aulos pairs (double flutes) may have served as a drone or "keynote," while the other played melodic passages. Kilmer's decipherment of the cuneiform tablets indicate that the simultaneous sounding of different pitches was practiced very early, perhaps by 2000 BCE.

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Old Etruria /Roman-Etruscan music

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Led by Conrad Steinmann the ensemble Melpomen has dedicated itself to the musical exploration of classic Ancient Greece.

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