Channel: Michael Levy
Duration: 3:43
Description: …I wonder what Orpheus would have thought of this?? The melody forms track 1 of my 2012 album of the same title, “Ode to Ancient Rome” – available from all major digital music stores: http://www.ancientlyre.com/ancient_roman_themed_albums/ode_to_ancient_rome/
The ‘live’ rendition in this video, is performed on the iconic Greco-Roman kithara of classical antiquity, hand-made in modern Greece by Luthieros: http://en.luthieros.com/product/cithara-of-the-golden-age-ancient-greek-cithara-9-strings-top-quality-handcrafted-musical-instrument
The original recording on the album “Ode to Ancient Rome”, featured my treble 10-string lyre by Marini Made Harps, tuned in authentic pure just intonation (Ptolemy’s Intense Diatonic). The geometric purity of musical intervals in just intonation, for me, enhances the distinctively poignant quality of the ancient Greek Phrygian Mode in which this piece is written (equivalent of D-D on the white notes of the piano and misnamed the ‘Dorian’ mode by scholars in the early Middle Ages).
Although no actual music of ancient Rome has sadly survived, about 60 fragments of ancient Greek music have been preserved, written in an unambiguous alphabetic notation, whereby specific alphabetical symbols represented specific pitches. Since the Romans borrowed so much of their artistic and architectural styles from the Greeks, it follows that they probably did the same with their lost music, no doubt including the use of the ancient Greek musical modes and intonations…
Published: May 17, 2018 11:51 am