What Ancient Greek Music Sounded Like: Listen to a Reconstruction That’s “100% Accurate”

From 750 BC to 400 BC, the ancient Greeks composed songs for the accompaniment of lyres, reed pipes, and various percussion instruments. After more than 2,000 years, modern scholars have finally discovered how to reconstruct and perform these songs with (allegedly) 100% accuracy.

Writing on the BBC websiteArmand Dangur, Musician and classical tutor at Oxford Universitynote:

[Ancient Greek] Instruments are known from written descriptions, paintings, and archaeological remains, which confirm the range of tones and pitches they produce.

Now, new facts about ancient Greek music are being revealed from dozens of ancient manuscripts inscribed with a phonetic notation system devised around 450 B.C., consisting of alphabetic letters and symbols placed above Greek vowels. It became clear.

The Greeks calculated mathematical ratios of pitches. The first octave is 2:1, the fifth octave is 3:2, the fourth octave is 4:3, and so on.

The notation accurately indicates relative pitch.

So what did Greek music sound like? You can listen below david cleeseA classical scholar at Newcastle University, he performs ancient Greek songs taken from stone inscriptions constructed on an eight-stringed “canon” (an instrument similar to a zither) with a movable bridge. “This song is credited to Seikiros.” archeology magazine says.

Read below to know more about all this. Dangoor article on BBC.

Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on our site in October 2013.

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