Reproductions/Recreations of Ancient Music

**Teleklos Archelaou** · 02-13-2007, 09:25

Well, it looks like the Kilmartin Sessions is one of the only other real things I can find: http://www.kilmartin.org/music/music.html They have a few short samples on the site and it's available on CD for about 14 pounds.

Using original instruments and reconstructions, this unique CD offers, for the first time, a chance to hear the sounds that would have been familiar to our forebears thousands of years ago. It includes the first commercially available recordings of the two thousand year old Caprington horn, the 8th century iron bell of St Adomnan, the 9th century Pictish triple pipes, and many other remarkable items, including a traditional Gaelic quern song and its use as melody for St Columba's visionary poem, the Altus Prosator. The music ranges from ringing rocks to bird-bone flutes; Bronze Age horns and drums to the extraordinary sound of the Celtic war trumpet, the carnyx (left), specially recorded for the Kilmartin Sessions in Smoo Cave. It ends with the eerie combination of harmonic singing and Bronze Age horn, recorded in the Hamilton Mausoleum - the building with the longest reverberation in the world. It was an appropriate choice, for like the Mausoleum, this CD has its own reverberations reaching into our remotest past and our deepest sub-concious.

This Carolan's Receipt CD is harp music that is pretty early compared to anything else we have written down, but it's only 17th century - and it sounds a little like it too, but he was also influenced by some classical composers.
http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/1097983/a/Carolan's+Receipt.htm

"Derek Bell recreates the authentic sound of Carolan, the blind 17th century Irish harper who transformed this traditional musical genre. (Actually Bell is almost certainly a far better harp player than Carolan, whose genius was composition, not performance.) Bell mainly uses a wire-strung harp, which gives his arrangements the haunting air of a music box. Listen closely for Bell's magical musical embellishments. Bell includes some of Carolan's best-known pieces (Blind Mary, George Barabazon, and Carolan's Farewell to Music) but also treats us to some lesser-known masterpieces, including Lady Athenry, Caralon's Nightcap, and Lady Gethin."

**oudysseos** · 02-13-2007, 17:49

Just as far as Carolan goes- Irish trad music happens to be something that I know quite a bit about, and I'd have to say that Carolan's 18th century harp music would be an innacurate analogue for 3rd century BC celtic music, as the wire-strung harp is an essentially modern instrument, dating from no earlier than the 11th or 12th century AD. Carolan also composed in the modern diatonic mode (heavily influenced by older irish modes of course) so his music still sounds "modern" and is still popular today. SO it's unlikely that Vercingetorix would have been listening to Planxty Irwin.

**Teleklos Archelaou** · 02-13-2007, 18:12

Thanks oudysseos! It sounded way too classical to me anyway.

A few things I might recommend, btw, for other culture groups:

Conrad Steinmann - Melpomen: Ancient Greek Music
Various Artists - Yemen - Music of the North
Atrium Musicae De Madrid - Musique Arabo-Andalouse
Huun-Huur-Tu - Where Young Grass Grows
Gevorg Dabagian - The Music of Armenia: Volume Three - Duduk
Ali Jihad Racy - Ancient Egypt: A Tribute
Krauka - Vikinga Seidur

Not all correct for the time period exactly, but all with a very good feel and quite nice to listen to on the whole while playing EB.

**oudysseos** · 02-13-2007, 21:27

Here's another web resource for EB contemporary greek music- I hope it's not a repeat. It's interesting because you see images of the actual papyri, then click on them to hear them. Also has links and resources.

There is here in Dublin a National Archive for Music, I hace a reader's card, I will pop in some day and see if they have any resources on ancient music. Don't have much hope though.

Edit-- I suppose that this post will work out much better if I include the link :)

http://classics.uc.edu/music/

Edit of the edit-- here's another good music site.

http://users.otenet.gr/~bm-celusy/grmusic.html

Edit cubed-- Bovine Management?