Here's the Skinny

Apollo and the Marsyus, Athens National Museum, CA 350-320 BC. Thanks to http://www.mlahanas.de

Well, folks,

it's been an unusually and abnormally busy week. I've contacted three ISU professors regarding the development of the Greek/Roman lyre and kithara (I know I haven't mentioned this, but my flurry of sources keep reminding me that I must mention: the kithara [or cithara] is a lyre used for performance.).

Two professors answered me (hey, not a bad number!) and one of them had a rather extensive list of places to look for speculations (I might even go out on a limb here and say educated hypotheses) on ancient music - what it sounded like, what modes they played with, and even a few recordings. I'm very excited to show these to you, as soon as I can figure out embed code.

Let me make a few generalizations, though, until I can update this entry properly.

It appears, after 7 or 8 songs picked at random, that the primary mode of the Greeks was Phrygian. It's quite possible that stochasticity simply isn't in my favor and that my random choice led to an insufficient sample. I assure you - I will be commenting at length on a more deliberate sample size as soon as I can post these songs. Feel free to listen to them in their original home by following either of the links on this paragraph.

Another issue I very much want to address in this blog are music guilds of ancient Greece and Rome. For the record, I care not to comment on this until I have completely scoured my sources, but this seems to be a subject with a lot of room for research. Thusfar, there have been almost no references or information on Musical guilds (both performers and instrument craftsmen) on the internet. Thank goodness for the library (and for online bookstores), because I have quite a few sources that give me quite a bit of hope.

Until then, though, here's a FABULOUS list of sources I've been encouraged to read. I'm hoping to have a lot of information once I get my paws on them! It appears as though I'm going to have to do a lot of work with google translate, but it's awfully exciting to have access to information that non-german speakers don't yet have!

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~timmoore/AncientMusicSelectedBibliography.html

http://www.iwu.edu/~classics/music.html

http://classics.uc.edu/music/michigan/index.html