Ancient Greek Chelys Lyre Reconstruction

[Guest]

I hope it doesn't awaken painful memories for some, but I found this demonstration of a reconstructed lyre interesting. The first piece is apparently from West's book.

[ardcarp]

Fascinating! I'm woefully ignorabt on the subjest so don't get your references either to 'painful memories' or to 'West's book'. The first two pieces sounded quite 'English Medieval' to me, and I wonder what evidence there is for the tuning scale used? It sounded like a well tuned Dorian scale...I wonder if the Greeks would have had such a diatinic-sounding scale, or whether something a bit more pentatonic and oriental-sounding might have been the norm. Interesting that the strumming piece achieved its chording by stopping off the strings not required. Is this the sort of instrument Orfeo might have used?

[tony yyy]

Sorry to be cryptic, adcarp. Martin West's book, Ancient Greek Music, is one of the standard works for beginners on the subject. We discussed lyres and Ancient Greek Music on the R3 message boards a few years ago when they'd become very restricted - hence the painful memories.

The following is gleaned from West's book.

The first piece he plays is the Invocation of the Muse. It was transmitted in manuscripts with the songs of Mesomedes, a noted citharode and composer but probably wasn't written by him.

Sing for me, dear Muse,
Begin my tuneful strain;
A breeze blow from your groves
To stir my listless brain.

Here's the Greek text (from here)

ἄειδε Μοῦσά μοι φίλη,
μολπῆς δ’ ἐμῆς κατάρχου,
αὔρη δὲ σῶν ἀπ’ ἀλσέων
ἐμὰς φρένας δονείτω.

The genus is diatonic, i.e. no quartertones. It's notated in the (Ancient Greek) Lydian mode but starts on the 3rd degree (as notated by West, it starts on E - roughly a Phrygian church mode, I think). Theree are a couple of chromatic notes as well.

I think there is some historical justification for stopping notes with the left hand whilst strumming with the right although I've no idea if it was precisely as he does it. Apparently this was suggested by Saint Seans who pointed out that some African lyres are played in that way.