It is not so difficult to put on an ancient Greek drama; many of the works by Greece's top dramatists have been copied and preserved. But it is not so easy to perform a musical concert, using reproductions of ancient instruments, as it might have sounded in Classical Greece. Instruments that ancient are so fragile that they cannot be played, and there was no form of written music. But one Australian musicologist is playing musical detective to figure out what Greek music must have been like.
Michael Atherton, a professor at the University of Western Sydney, studies clues about music in ancient Greece and then tries to reproduce the sound. Some of those clues are contained in musical documents that still exist, though most have missing sections. Other clues include a few fragile and valuable instruments that have survived over the years, some descriptions from sources such as Plato and Aristotle of how different instruments sounded, and pictures of the instruments and how they were held that are painted on ancient pottery. With the help of a violinmaker, Atherton tries to build copies of the Greek instruments and then figures out how to play them.
Another type of festival performance was the dithyramb, a dancing chorus that evolved into drama. The word orchestra comes from the Greek word for “dance” (orcheisthai), and referred to the round stage where the chorus members performed. The aulos, a flute-like instrument that often had two pipes, was also popular and was often used to play dancing music, but lyre playing was especially desirable because the performer could sing and play at the same time.
World History
