Ancient Greek Musical Fragment (Anonymi Bellerman 97 - Arranged For Replica Kithara) - This beauiful melody, written in the haunting ancient Greek Hypolydian Mode, was preserved in several Byzantine manuscripts - Conspectus Codicum:
V. Venetus Marcianus appl. cl. VI, saec. XIII-XIV
N. Neapolitanus graecus III. C4, saec. XV
F. Florentius Ricc. 41, saec. XVI

This piece originally featured on my album, "The Ancient Greek Lyre". This unique album features 6 examples of some of the actual music of ancient Greece & 6 original compositions for replica ancient Greek Kithara lyre, in some of the original ancient Greek Modes (as described in the writings of Plato & Aristotle, some 2400 years ago).

The concept of this album & my previous album, "The Ancient Greek Modes", is to recreate the both the sounds of the musical modes once used in Ancient Greece & to restore the lost sounds of the ancient Greek Kithara - the large wooden lyre once favoured by the professional musicians of Ancient Greece...


THE ANCIENT GREEK MODES

The names of musical modes in use today, (e.g. Dorian, Mixolydian etc) although having the same names as the original Greek musical modes, were actually misnamed during the Middle Ages! Apparently, the Greeks counted intervals from top to bottom. When medieval ecclesiastical scholars tried to interpret the ancient texts, they counted from bottom to top, jumbling the information. The misnamed medieval modes are only distinguished by the ancient Greek modes of the same name, by being labelled “Church Modes”. It was due to a misinterpretation of the Latin texts of Boethius, that medieval modes were given the wrong Greek names!

According to an article on Greece in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, the original ancient Greek names for species of the octave included the following (on white keys):

B-B: Mixolydian
E-E: Dorian
A-A: Hypodorian
D-D: Phrygian
G-G: Hypophrygian
C-C: Lydian
F-F: Hypolydian

For what Plato & Aristotle themselves had this to say about these ancient musical modes, please see this fascinating link:

http://www.pathguy.com/modes.htm

More interesting reading can be found at :

http://www.midicode.com/tunings/greek.shtml