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The Lyre of Thamyris

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In Greek mythology, Thamyris (Greek: Θάμυρις, Thámuris), son of Philammon and the nymph Argiope, was a Thracian singer who was so proud of his skill that he boasted he could out sing the Muses. He competed against them and lost - as punishment for his presumption they blinded him, and took away his ability to make poetry and to play the lyre.This outline of the story is told in the Iliad.

This piece attempts to evoke the particularly poignant feel of this gem of haunting ancient Greek mythology - it is in the sorrowful ancient Greek Hypodorian mode. This mode, the equivalent intervals as A-A on the white notes of the piano (and misnamed the "Aeolian Mode" by scholars in the Middle Ages - who assigned all the ancient Greek modes the wrong original ancient Greek names!) is the basis of all our modern palette of minor scales and is sometimes known as the 'natural minor'.

The sorrowful character of this mode is further enhanced by the use of geometrically pure musical intervals tuned in authentic just intonation.