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We hear from Plato's "Republic" that the education of a virtuous citizen is based on two things: two words
Nikos Xanthoulis explores the ancient Greek lyre, Plato's philosophy on music and education, and the mystical harmony of the universe.
Key Takeaways
- Ancient Greek education valued music (mousikḗ) as essential for soul and character development.
- Music and philosophy were deeply intertwined in classical thought, especially in Plato and Pythagorean traditions.
- The universe may have a fundamental harmony or 'music' that modern science is beginning to confirm.
- Mystical experiences of universal harmony are accessible beyond Eastern traditions, also found in Western philosophy.
- The ancient lyre remains a symbolic and practical tool for connecting with these timeless ideas.
Summary
- Plato's concept of education centers on 'Logos' (reason) and 'Mousikḗ' (music/culture), essential for structuring the soul.
- The term 'mousikḗ' is deeply rooted in ancient Greek culture, linked to the Muses who symbolize various arts and knowledge.
- Music in ancient Greece encompassed dance, poetry, rhythm, harmony, and melody, all vital to soul development.
- Plato was influenced by Pythagorean ideas, viewing music and its elements as mathematically underpinning the universe.
- Modern science, like NASA's Chandra observatory, has discovered cosmic sounds that echo ancient philosophical ideas of universal harmony.
- Nikos Xanthoulis shares a personal mystical experience of connecting with the universe's harmony through playing the lyre.
- The discussion touches on Western philosophy's mystical experiences, citing Rousseau, Spinoza, and Gnostic teachings about inner and outer paradise.
- Xanthoulis’s personal journey from aspiring philologist to principal trumpet player and lyre musician highlights the blend of music and philosophy.
- The ancient Greek lyre is presented as a powerful instrument for experiencing and expressing cosmic and philosophical truths.
- The video emphasizes rediscovering the 'music of the universe' as a path to wisdom beyond mere information.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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that many classicists claim are untranslatable, Logos and Mousikḗ. Sometimes translated as Reason and Culture, or the "Liberal Arts." "Liberal," of course, being very different today than what it used to be.
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But Plato, who wrote the Republic, chose his words so carefully that some philosophers had claimed that every single word is put in absolute perfection,
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including words like "and" and "the." And "mousikḗ," originally meaning music, must have been there for a reason. So,
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what if Plato meant exactly what he said: that the education of the heart of the soul is based on Logos
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and music! And who better to ask than a musician? So in this episode of Ancient Greece Revisited, I have the honor to be joined by Nikos Xanthoulis. Welcome. Thank you for accepting
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our invitation.
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It's an honor.
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Thank you for the invitation, it is my honour
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to share with you such great ideas. Plato is the philosopher; all the others tried to interpret him. They are
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sub-notes.
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Someone said in Plato's philosophy.
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Exactly. And the words that Plato used and the words that we find in ancient Greece are very difficult to translate, and a word as simple as "mousikḗ,"
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as music, is not exactly translatable. And in many ways these classicists that changed it had their reasons. Well, mousikḗ is a word that comes from the
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Muses. And Muses, the Muse,
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were deities? The Nine Muses were daughters of Mnemosyne,
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Memory. And they were daughters of Zeus. But let's see the root of the word "muse." The root is the verb (Proto-Indo-European) *mō that means "I wish." And who doesn't wish to party?
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The muses were very welcomed by the gods on Olympus to dance, to sing, to discuss. All of them there were the symbols of the knowledge of a part of the knowledge.
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For example, Terpsichore,
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she is the Muse of dance. Or Calliope,
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she is the muse of nice poetry, of epos.
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Every Muse
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had a special talent, and all together they were the core
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of the human
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knowledge. But let's see also what music was in ancient, Classical times. Music was
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much wider than we can understand.
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Music was
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dance, music as we can understand it, as the science, art of sounds,
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and poetry as well. When Plato says that
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the music is the way
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that the children
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structure their soul,
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he knows
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that through the rhythm,
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through the harmony,
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through the melody, the three elements of the music, these three elements are enough to
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build
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a well-structured
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soul. And we also know
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that Plato to a certain degree was a
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Pythagorean. And for Pythagoras, what you just mentioned, music and these three elements had a mathematical
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underpinning,
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that somehow was almost like
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the Matrix that we live in. The "program" that runs the universe almost is made by these numbers, by these
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symmetries and these
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these sequences. Yeah, all these ideas by P-i-thagoras, Pythagoras as the English say.
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I will say Pithagoras, okay? It's better for me. Till 2007,
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it was a kind of nice ideas.
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Maybe a little bit mystical.
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2007 AD! 2007 A.D. Exactly. At that time,
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the observatory Chandra by NASA discovered that
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it exists, the basic sound of the universe exists.
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And it is
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56 octaves
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below the B-flat. 56 octaves below this note is the basic sound after the Big Bang, and it was the
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scientists that discovered that. Not
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a simple
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ancient mind. But Pythagoras was not a simple mind. Did he hear the music of the universe?
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Who can say? No, maybe not. Maybe he felt it. And
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this is
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the very core of
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not exactly the knowledge. Do you remember that Bertrand Russell says, "Wisdom
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we lost
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the wisdom because of
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knowledge and we lost the knowledge because of the information."
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I think it was T. S. Eliot who said that.
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Yeah, it was T. S. Eliot, you're right.
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Because Bertrand Russell, just to correct this, would not have a very high opinion of Plato. But he didn't have a high opinion of anyone who was not him. So that's for a different episode, I guess. But T. S. Eliot had this line, he said:
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Where is the wisdom we lost in knowledge? Where's the knowledge we lost in information?
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And this is the time of information. It was a very timely verse back then because it was, I guess, before the
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"information revolution." So it was very timely for him to say that. Okay, what we need to do as human beings is to try
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to rediscover
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the music of the universe. Can we do that? I'm not sure that we can do that, but I must tell you something. Some months ago I was at the "Ianos" library
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here in Athens,
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one of the best here in Athens, presenting a book by a friend, and he asked me to
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play my lyre. And they asked me what do I find
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practicing the lyre?
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And I said: You know, with a lyre as
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every musician
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that he can
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play on a very high level with a lyre,
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I tried to catch
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the moment, this special moment that I understood that I can find the harmony of the universe. And I said at that moment it happened only once. But I said, yes, I can do that. But it was only once that I got it.
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Unfortunately. Hopefully, I think I can
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do that again. And was this
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a real experience?
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Yeah, it was a real experience, a mystical experience! It's not the time, this time that we live
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of mystical experiences, but
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no. The mystical experience exists. Well, I can believe it myself, and what I found fascinating is that it's not just reserved for
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Hindu mystics, and what one will find if they read philosophy, Western philosophy,
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you know, dry, boring sometimes, Western philosophy, is that many people
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had similar experiences. Like Rousseau, for example, who you wouldn't have thought
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that he was that.
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But he had a moment apparently when he was traveling to find Diderot, one of his friends and one of the great "Encyclopédistes." And he was going there, he was a prisoner in the Bastille. And as he was going, he had a kind of a vision where he saw, if I can remember it correctly, that
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if nature is perfectly structured, and man is a part of nature, then man's
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real desires cannot be in conflict with nature.
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So if man desires something that is in conflict with nature, it's not a real desire. And so a system has to be developed almost like Plato's "Republic" to educate man on his proper desires.
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If we accept what we have,
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this is the world. This is paradise. We have to see the paradise.
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As Paracelsus says at the "La Rosa de Paracelso," Jorge Luis Borges. This is paradise where we live now.
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This is paradise, and the freedom as Spinoza says. What we have to do is to try to
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to grasp it.
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Well, Jesus said, at least in the Gnostic Gospels, he said
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the Kingdom of the Father is inside of us and around us, so
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it is here!
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And how did you encounter this beautiful instrument? Well, I wanted to be a philologist,
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but it didn't happen.
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I can tell! It didn't happen. I became a musician.
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Because when I was very young, at the age of 18 years old, and I was at the Athens Conservatory playing the trumpet, my teacher
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took me by hand, and we went to the director, and my teacher said to the director of the conservatory, "This will be the next trumpet professor of the conservatory."
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So at the age of 18, you can understand you decide to go this way that somebody else
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decided for you. And I did that. I didn't regret, of course. After four years, I became the principal trumpet player of the Greek National Opera, and I stayed there for 25 years.
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Playing. A hard task, I could say. It is a kind of
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athletic procedure to play the trumpet.
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So I had six times
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operation of hernia, for example.
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From anxiety.
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Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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And it was very hard. With lyre, it's...
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...when talking about themselves. The opposite of Greeks. And she started playing and I still remember that night it was a magical night And I bet that if I heard these same songs because I looked these songs up...
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...they were like pop songs, you know they did not have that... - ...feeling even when played by the original musicians. - Could you imagine you to speak...
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...Finnish? which is so hard a language, and to sing with them? Yes, but there was something in the live performance, which I still cannot put my finger on ...why is is a live performance...?
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you know, like as a software and an engineer in my day job I'm always this technically minded person that if the numbers fit, then they're the same.
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But it's not the same... ...there's something to this live performance. Exactly, you know till 1930s the music was always alive You cannot imagine Beethoven to listen to recordings...
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...okay, not even Chopin, not even Tchaikovsky How did they learn the music of their contemporaries?
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I read it in a book. For example in Moscow, in the end of the 19th century There were two three four musicians that decided to have a dinner together and after that...
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...somebody of them... ...had a new score of the music published in Rome What they did?
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They held the score in front of them and with four hands... ...they played the two staves of the piano.
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So, they learned the music of other composers by playing the music... ...not by listening to the music.
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Just listening. And you know... ...I think that many musicians... ...prefer to play the new music to understand it - To to feel the music not to listen. - It's almost like invoking something Because it's almost like calling out this music from existence
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- ..just for a moment. - Yes, so nice, you know... ...when I played at the opera we had a great maestro, conductor ...Odysseas Dimitriadis, he was...
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...one of the best conductors of Soviet Union in Moscow at the Bolshoi Theater And we had to play at that time... Eugene Onegin, by Tchaikovsky.
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After the rehearsal he asked for me to... ...drive him to his house. And... ..in the car I told him: "what kind of music do you prefer to to listen to?" Nothing.
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I don't want to listen to the music I had music enough. Because he created the music.
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The music is something that you create not only to hear pathetically (passively) And if you can create music...
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...it is very creative. And I think now it's the perfect time to... ...listen to something.
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Let's create something let's create something. You know the main instruments... ...were three. The lyre the "diavlos" the double "aulos" (pipe) And the "tympanum," maybe we could say.
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So... ...these are the three elements of music that I mentioned before The "diavlos" ...that many times doubled the voice of the chorus, or of the singer, for example in the "aulodia" It is the melody, the strain.
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There is the accompaniment of the lyre, this is the harmony... ...that supports the melody.
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Even Jean-Philippe Rameau... ...in 1725... His book "Traité de l'harmonie," Treatise on harmony, he said that every good melody...
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...is supported... ...by a good... ...base, it means the harmony. And then the"tympanum?" this is the rhythm.
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And what is the characteristic of the rhythm? The repetition. So with these three instruments we can have the whole music We don't need other instruments.
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Because the greatest instrument is the voice. I've heard this many times and it was very hard for me to believe Oh, no, all the teachers of the instruments at the conservatories...
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...they say when we play, a melody for example... Sing! You play trumpet and you say... sing!
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And this was a piece of music that has been saved in writing, correct? In ancient times, in ancient Greece there were two types, two systems...
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...of notation. A vocal one and an instrumental one. The vocal one... ...the vocal notation...
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...was with... ...letters as symbols of the notes, for example, if... - Greek letters. - Yeah, yeah, Greek letters.
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The capital letters. For example if I say to you "ΩΟΙ" Omega Omicron Iota. An ancient Greek musician could understand that it is FA-SOL-LA-SI-DO-RE-MI-FA.
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F G A B... And what were the scales...? How do we know that? How we know the scales?
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We have in our hands from the time of... ...Constantinos the Great 4rth century AD a treatise, a musical theoretical treatise ...by the author Alypius (of Alexandria) and we know all the scales...
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...both in... ...diatonic, chromatic and harmonic genus it's hard to explain to you what this genus is So he wrote in the, let's say, end of the Roman Empire beginning of the...
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Yeah, but it was the same tradition. - Byzantine? - No, it's not Byzantine It is ancient Greek tradition that comes till 4rth century.
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We lose the... ...tradition of the ancient Greek music because... ...because of Christianity. Christianity didn't want the Greek music because it was a pagan music.
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And the lyre was the symbol of the pagan music So we lost all this... great tradition.
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It's incredible, again linking it in the beginning, if music was the soul of this culture...
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...then it makes sense, if another culture comes in and tries to destroy it, to kill the soul.
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I don't think that it kills the the soul, because... You know when... I served as an associate researcher at the academy of athens the Folk Center ...and...
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at that time we had to... digitize the archive, 24 000 songs So I listened almost to 24 000 folk songs of the archive of the Folk Center Greek music, folk music.
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Folk Greek music. And I understood that approximately 60% Had the same structure.. ...of the...
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...pieces that we know from antiquity. The same harmonic structure. - And these are folk songs. - Yeah, so I believe, but I cannot prove it...
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...that the Greek folk music has maintained... ...the very soul of antiquity. But we cannot prove it.
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But, you know, the language... ...is the same. When I had to... ...compose the music from Eumenides...
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...in 2004... ...both in ancient Greek and modern Greek language for Anna Synodinou a presentation of Eumenides by Aeschylus I had to read and work composing the ancient text and I saw that there was no one word of Aeschylus that we don't use now in modern Greek
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I had a problem only with one word the first page "kelsas" " Απόλλων κελσας εις Δελφους" I say "kelsas." I don't know this word...
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κέλλω Ιt is "I come from sea to the land" εξόκειλε - This is the same word - We still use it... camouflaged - And this is something very important... - And so I mean that..
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...the language is alive. - Why not the music? - Exactly! And this is something very important because modern Greeks often have a complex with...
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connecting certain parts of their culture with ancient Greece And just because they open up, let's say Homer, who's ancient even by ancient standards they open up a page of Homer and they cannot understand... most of it .
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And they go "okey," then they close the book and go to the translation, but...
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...the language of the Christian Gospels for instance is almost readable... ...by every modern Greek.
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And this is a language that's 2 000 years old. Technically, it's ancient Greek. If you go to English for example - 14th century...? - 14th century is the limit.
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Chaucer, around the time of Chauser... ...is the limit of intelligibility for a modern If they go and read like the first... poem in english language that's been saved: Beowulf.
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- Nobody can understand Beowulf. - It's more German than English. - ...and Greek is not like that - My grandmother...
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...from the island of Skopelos with folk clothes she went to school only for three years and she could understand everything from the Gospels - ...from the Evangelion - Exactly.
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- Which is ancient Greek. - Which is "koine." It is the the hellenistic... ...dialect. Not dialect because it was...
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- ...the main language - It was the opposite of a dialect Okay, this is the language. The language is the same From Homer till now...
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...different type different Not syntaxes exactly, but yeah, different syntaxes, different grammatic But... ...the roots are always the same.
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The root words, yes. And I mean, even in ancient Greece there were... - ...problems with different dialects - Of course in...
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- From understand Sappho's dialect... - In the library of Alexandria... ...the great library of antiquity.
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You know that... ...the directors of the library Eratosthenes, Aristophanes Byzantios, Zenodotus, great scholars of that time, they used to write...
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... "λέξης" (lexis) In modern greek, it means "words" but in the "koine" (the Greek of the Gospels)...
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The language of Hellenistic times "lexis" means lexicon, vocabulary... ...to understand Homer, because they could not understand Homer Yeah, because some words, and it's very counter-intuitive...
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...because the older you go back you would think that the language is more simple, but it's not the case and in Homer they had I think five words just for...
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... "to look" Yeah but there are not many, the words are not that many in Homer...
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- ...that are difficult words for us. - No, no, and like you said about the "εξώκειλε" there's a word for "to look," one of the words is "δέρκεσθαι" (derkesthai) ...which is where the word "dragon" apparently...
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...apparently comes from. Dragon, like the creature that looks, stares, with burning eyes but we have it because we say "οξυδερκής" (oxyderkís) - Oh, yes, you're right. - So we even that Homeric ...word, we have it.
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And you said something very interesting about the "modes" in music And me as an amateur guitarist this is where I stopped reading theory I learned theory, and then someone, my teacher, introduced me to the modes...
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...and I could not understand it... ...so, I switched. I think that... I can show the modes on a special tune, on a special...
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...melody Everybody knows "Frère Jacques" the French folk song Medieval folk song I will play for you the song as it is and then I will change I will...
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...pass to the next ...note as first note What I want to say every note...
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...can be the beginning of a harmony. This is the "A" It can be the beginning of a harmony Now if I choose this one as first now...
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...I have a different harmony The first harmony has... ...this... ...chord as basic This harmony ...is totally different - In feeling - In feeling. This is the moral of the mode.
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We know the modes. Dorian Phrygian Aeolian Mixolydian, from jazz... from the medieval music... This is almost the same. I say almost the same because there is a gap at...
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the theory of western music in 4th century Boethius a great scholar and... ...political person of...
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of 5th century A.D When the Ostrogoths were in Italy, he was a prime minister also for Alarīcus And he died in prison He wrote "De (institutione) musica" In this book became the difference of how from the ancient to the medieval
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Modes, the different... ...structure of the octave. But the ancient greeks had modes. ...and we have inherited the names - Exactly. - ...because many musicians they hear Dorian ...Aeolian Lydian Mixolydian...
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...and immediately they're transported to to the world of ancient Greece We know for example that the Dorian was a manly mode - Could we...? - Yeah, of course! You know the...
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"Ένα το Χελιδόνι" (A Single Swallow) by Mikis Theodorakis is... ...this is the Dorian Mode, the real Dorian Mode, or the dorian feeling...
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It's not the dorian mode of antiquity but the feeling, this is what we have to to understand.
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- And we know that the Spartans were the Dorians - Exactly and this is We can feel the sullen...
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...feeling of the mode. If I go to this mode... ...it's totally different. If I go...
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...from this note. I don't explain to you because it's very difficult to understand Perhaps not as much the theory but could we do this experiment with...
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..."Frère Jacques," and pass through the different modes Because when I first heard that it was amazing How the same song, the same melody, can transmit different emotions I will play that, beginning from this... note.
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- Okay, this is the main note. - And what is this mode? The modern one it is a Major. In ancient times it would be a Lydian Now I will play the same....
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...analogies of the song but I will begin from this one, from the next and it will be the main note of this mode. You will listen to a totally different feeling Okay, now I will begin the same song, the same...
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...proportions, but the main note will be the next one, the "E" Every time is different.
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You can shift the feeling. And maybe that has something to do with the education of the virtuous citizen, that we began with.
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Yes because if you control... ...the feelings. There is a theory from the Baroque Time of 16th century. It is the theory of "affections" And what it means that some intervals of music produce special feelings, the affections I think people had a very good idea about that.
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Yeah, and they had this one now So... This... theory comes from the ancient Greek music theory because all these theoreticians of...
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Western Music, I mean (Nicola) Vicentino 1555 or Charlino 1558 or Girolamo Mei or Vincenzo Galilei, the father of Galileo Galilei who was a great composer and one of the members of Florentine Camerata that they revived the Ancient Greek Tragedy
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And what was this...? It was the opera. The opera is the effort to revive the ancient Greek tragedy, and we can see all the letters ...that (they) exchanged between each other how they try to understand the way that the ancient Greeks...
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...used the language in the tragedies Somehow instead of leading to greek tragedy it led to the opera which is a different thing.
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Is it? It is theater, it is music in the theater, it is chorus, it is solo...
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What is the tragedy? Could it have led to the "catharsis" though? - Yes, of course. Yeah, yeah... - The opera?
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Of course. I'm very "operatic." - Yes, I believe it - That so you think that the...
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- ...experiment was a success? - Yeah, it was a success, yeah, I believe that.
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I think that... ...the Italians did their best ...in their language They had all the tragedies in their hands at that time. I mean sixty hundreds.
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If they wanted to revive the... ...tragedy, or the comedy, or the drama in general they had to set in music the lyrics...
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...translated from ancient texts, but they didn't do so. Why? Because the Renaissance... ...buried the corpse of antiquity and revived the spirit - This is a very interesting theory... - It's not mine. It is by (Erwin) Panofsky Because...
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...if someone were to ask me before, I would say that the Renaissance... ...revived the body but not the spirit and by that I would mean that they had lost something essential about ancient Greece ...but they somehow revived the form. But you're saying it's the opposite they revive the spirit...
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- ...successfully but not the body. - Yes, why did they need the body? The body belong to the ancients.
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They needed to create a new world... ...and the new world... ...was their world ...not a different We will never understand what the antiquity was for the Greeks.
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We're very proud of our ancient Greek ancestry We're very proud and we think that we belong...
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- ...in this net, in this chain - Line. But, yes, okay, maybe from our blood from our language. It's not enough.
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The gratitude to... ...the ancients are for them not for us. If we want... ...to do something analogous.
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Let's do it. It's not enough to have... ...to be... ...grandsons of them. And what you said about the Renaissance is not restricted to music, correct?
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You were talking about the whole project of the Renaissance. This great scholar... ...Panovsky, he said...
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...what I said before about the spirit of the... ...antiquity ...for the arts in general, for example...
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...the great painting of... ...Botticelli: Aphrodite (Venus) It is... it was a painting by Apelles, from Hellenistic times And it is Pliny That...
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...described this painting and Botticelli tried... - ...to revive it - Yeah, to revive the the whole painting - From the descriptions of a painting - Exactly And the painting of course was lost - Yeah, all the paintings were lost - Because the materials were not...
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Only one small painting from 540 BC from the cave of Pizza is now at the...
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National Archaeological Museum and it was survived because it was in a cave It was preserved.
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But when it comes to music, we do have... ...documents, and that's something that, perhaps not many people are aware that we do have...
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complete tablatures, essentially, we would call them, from ancient Greece. There are many papyri from...
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...Egypt. There are also... ...from manuscripts. That come from Constantinople. And in the library of Bessarion that it is the basic part of the Marciana Library in...
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...Venice We have 16 treatises of ancient Greek music theory And where they written... - ...in let's say the 5th century BC? - It is from 4rth century BC.
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They were so old? No, the manuscripts are from... the earlier is the 9th century But it is in the tradition of copies...
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Copies of manuscripts that were written in the 4rth century BC describing music Yes. We don't have the manuscripts of the originals but we have....
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I have worked on the... ...manuscript of Bessarion in Venice and it's of 12th century It is magic. It is magical.
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When you take in your hands, this... ...manuscript... ...you see... ...the letters ...of a Greek And you feel... I remember when I was young we... used to take letters from relatives from America and...
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...in the beginning, we tried to to understand... ...their... ...characters of writing, and... ...after a while we understood how they write...
Speaker A
...and it was the same thing exactly, like a letter from the past. And, in the margins...
Speaker A
...there were... ...other... ...readers... ...from other centuries. It is goosebumps... - Taking notes - Yes, taking notes... in Greek.
Speaker A
These were just musical pieces, or... No, the treatises are on theory but there are many papyri with music ...music notes.
Speaker A
We have also, from the tradition of manuscripts... ...about four or five hymns by the composer Mesomedes ...from Crete.
Speaker A
He was the beloved composer of... ...the Emperor Hadrian. 2nd century AD. We have this small, this tiny papyrus...
Speaker A
...from 408 (BC) ...by Euripides. It was in a bigger... ειλητάριο (eilitarion), you know, the difference between the manuscript the codex and the eilitarion The eilitarion is what we say...
Speaker A
...papyrus. The codex is the book as we know it now. We have... Seikilos Epitaphios Epitaph.
Speaker A
It is 3rd or 4rth century AD. And it was, engraved on the uh on a stone The stone, now is at the Archaeological Museum of Copenhagen So it sounds like we have a lot - About 62. - 62 manuscripts with...
Speaker A
...incomplete most of them Some more than 10 are... ...almost understandable Not complete, but understandable and we can...
Speaker A
...reproduce the music. And if we have so much, why did you say in the beginning that, we will never know...
Speaker A
- ...what the experience was? - Not exactly know... - ... that we'll never experience what they experienced - Please, imagine that we find a score...
Speaker A
...and in this score is written everything that we can understand... ...how to play this music.
Speaker A
It's not enough. Because... This is the transmitter Who is the receiver? You cannot understand the Chinese opera Neither do I.
Speaker A
Why? Because we don't know the symbols and all the codes. - And the meanings. - And the meanings.
Speaker A
So, many meanings are not understandable from ancient times Music is something that happens between...
Speaker A
- ...people. Between the player and the listener. - Yeah. It's almost like a magic spell that happens It is a universal language, the music is a universal language ...and...
Speaker A
...you can approach the people, every person, through the feelings I spoke before about affections There was a...
Speaker A
...a trend Not exactly a trend, but an effort... ...for 10 years, about 10 years. It was Angelos Chaniotis from Princeton university that he tried...
Speaker A
- ...to re-discover? To discover? - To "revisit" perhaps yet. The feelings... of ancient times. It's not easy It's not easy Yes, you can understand many things.
Speaker A
It's not easy to to think that they had different feelings to begin. They didn't have different feelings!
Speaker A
But but something is stopping us, obviously What is it? Who can say, I enjoy...
Speaker A
...what I do now. And the ancient Greek music, or the lyre... ...is... the... αφορμή (occasion) Yeah, it's not the cause, it's the excuse almost It's the beginning...
Speaker A
...of finding myself. And... ...this is what I want to do. There is... There are two...
Speaker A
...ways of finding the ancient Greek music One is totally scientific. But there is no feeling in this.
Speaker A
The other one is music, and there is feeling in this. - I prefer the second one - And could we marry the two perhaps?
Speaker A
Yes, but there are so many gaps... ...in our knowledge that only your... ...imagination can...
Speaker A
...breach the gaps. Because talking about feelings, I always have in my mind ancient Greek tragedy Which is something that fascinates me and it's something that's lost not because the text is lost we have the text, we have a lot of knowledge, but somehow we cannot...
Speaker A
...reproduce it We don't know the music for example, because all these... ...great playwrights, they were composers.
Speaker A
Euripides was the greatest composer. Everybody... ...knew his music, his choruses. Even foreigners And today we think of Euripides as a writer, as a playwriter - But back in ancient Greece... - He was everything This is very important to imagine, that a single person...
Speaker A
...wrote: the "logos," the word He was the director. He was the composer. And maybe, like Sophocles...
Speaker A
...he was the actor. Even acting! But at least these three: the word spoken and the music of the chorus, one man would write them So it would be like a complete work of art in a way that today, we live in a very fragmented society
Speaker A
and existence perhaps where every person has their little niche and it's impossible to imagine this completeness, perhaps, of the artist.
Speaker A
It's so difficult to understand that because don't Let's don't forget that... ...these great playwrights ...wrote their tragedies or comedies or whatever in the frame of religious feasts It was not theater as we understand...
Speaker A
...today. This is the transmitter and the receiver that I said before - The "set and setting" as some - Yeah...
Speaker A
They used to see, to watch... ...a show in front of them, but it was a religious act It was not just acting.
Speaker A
It was religious, but there was a freedom that we don't find in other cultures. For example, the gods could be ...even ridiculed sometimes, in comedies.
Speaker A
Yet... ...remaining gods, somehow. It's not the same ridicule that perhaps some atheists - ...throw against modern Christians. - They were so nicely human It was a human kind of... mocking something you love.
Speaker A
- ...almost, that is lost. - Exactly. And all this coming into modern Greece You said that even in folk songs that...
Speaker A
...myself and others in our team grew up with as children here in Greece... that In your opinion they have retained something - ...of these ancient Greeks - I believe - I felt it. It is my instinct, my... - ...intuition.
Speaker A
I have not the method to prove it ...and... ...if you want to be... ...scientifically correct, you say: "Yes, I see something. Please..." - You can understand that, you can feel that - You leave it for others to investigate.
Speaker A
Maybe in the future they can... - ...understand something. - What types of songs do you have in mind?
Speaker A
For example in the Greek folk songs there are composite rhythms. For example... Kalamatianos: 7/8 Or very well known the "Pean" Peonic Rythm. It is 5/8ths. Hadjidakis is full of 5/8ths Έχω ένα μυστικό... (Greek song) This is 5/8ths And some of these songs were in Greek films from the 1960s as well. So it's fascinating.
Speaker A
Yeah, and it's the same rhythm as... ...the Delphic Pean of 127 BC And Hadjidakis, since you mentioned the name, is...
Speaker A
... some say the greatest Greek composer of, perhaps, the 20th century. Yeah, Hadjidakis and Theodorakis And Xenakis of course Nikos Skalkottas as well. A great composer.
Speaker A
Hadjidakis tried to do something of a... Original! Of today. But echoing something of the past I feel I don't think that he tried to do so. I think that he felt the tradition in his heart.
Speaker A
He could by intuition... ...be inside this tradition... ...but... - ...to the core of this tradition - Without copying anything.
Speaker A
Yeah. He didn't need to copy. I'll take... it's okay. All that is tradition. What we have to do is to play...
Speaker A
...nice music... ...very well educated... ...but alive. I want to play for everybody and if I can speak to his soul, to his heart, this is enough for me and if I use the lyre or the trumpet or...
Speaker A
I don't know, the didgeridoo from Australia ... ... do that! You have to do music, and you have to...
Speaker A
...de a part... ...of this harmony of the universe. - That's what i'm trying to do. - Very good, very good ending, so...
Speaker A
Where do we find you find you now? What is your effort with a with the lyre?
Speaker A
Where are you now in life in relation? I have a collaboration with the EMAP (European Music Archaeology Project) It is a project, a European project, to revive the ancient instruments And... hopefully I'll go to Italy in end of August
Speaker A
For seminars, we begin "piano piano" as the Italians say "slowly slowly" to... ...to teach the ancient instruments During the summer, I will have some concerts with an operatic singer...
Speaker A
and a violin and a cello, and it will be ancient greek music Special.. ...arranged by me ...as a dialogue ...between ancient times and modern times .
Speaker A
- And you're also... - I will play in Delos - ...in Delphi, in Olympia - All the sacred places.
Speaker A
Yeah, yeah. In Sounion... - ...through the Greek National Opera - Very good, very good.
Speaker A
And you're also engaged in a... ...in a teaching course I have... ...written a method ... of the lyre. To learn the lyre in four years.
Speaker A
it is a very... ...classical method of approaching the instrument You can find this method I have a very good student from Thessaloniki I had with her only two lessons, but she followed...
Speaker A
...the whole system, my system of the method and she plays... - Fantastically. She's fantastic. - She must have a lot of talent Yeah. Rosa Francorapti is her name.
Speaker A
- And have you published that method...? - Yeah, yes. - People can find it... online? - Yes. Of course.
Speaker A
- "iWrite" is the edition - Okay, we'll definitely put the links below - So you're engaged in a project of really teaching the lyre - ...and making it a part of... - Yes, I'm, very careful. I cannot...
Speaker A
I'm old enough I'm 58 years old I have worked a lot in music. I cannot teach amateurs. I cannot teach...
Speaker A
...beginners, I'm very tired to do that I have done that many years in my life and I want real musicians To follow this method if they want. If they don't...
Speaker A
- And it's an original method... - It is an original, yeah. it is both in English and Greek. The texts.
Speaker A
And where do you see the lyre in say...? - ...15 years and 50 years. - Oh, you know...
Speaker A
...this is a very nice instrument to... ...have a good time when you are alone For example, do you remember Achilles...?
Speaker A
...after he lost Chryseis - This girl, the slave, Chryseis? - Yes. He went near the sea with his golden "formix," golden lyre...
Speaker A
... playing, and trying to to calm his wrath It's very beautiful image, this warrior...
Speaker A
Yes, and I've done it many times for myself ...for my problems, for my... But where do you see it in our culture, in our current culture?
Speaker A
Where do you see the lyre? Taking it to a place? Yeah, I think that it could be...
Speaker A
...a part of accompanying the... Iliad and the Odyssey. I have done that in America many times, even in Greece we...
Speaker A
...recited the whole Odyssey in the National Archaeological Museum, in one year Once per month. Two tragedies per month.. two rhapsodies per month 24 rhapsodies. It was fantastic.
Speaker A
I think it is... It is very nice to to do so in a company with friends One page each one, to read, and with the lyre to accompany ...this recitation.
Speaker A
And you know... the recitation... The story... ... is what we need. We need the story - I couldn't agree more. - Yeah, I think it all begins with a story.
Speaker A
Yeah a story. We need a story - Just tell me a story and... it will be nice. - So this is not going to be the end of our story - Like I say, we are going to meet again for sure - Thank you very much for this...
Speaker A
Thank you very much for for coming here. Thank you very much for sharing all that and I'm sure our paths will follow close and we'll cross many many more times.
Speaker A
And we'll create a story together - So thank you very very much for that. - - Thank you very much.
Speaker A
And see you very soon. So Do Do So So So You
Topics:PlatoAncient Greek LyreMousikḗPythagorasMusic and PhilosophyUniversal HarmonyNikos XanthoulisAncient GreeceMystical ExperienceEducation in Ancient Greece
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