Re: [tuning] ancient Greek music

If you want to make music that would be something like that of the homeric
era, vocal music should dominate, with instruments used sparsely. Stick to a
four-stringed lyre for accompanying solo voices, perhaps auloi and small
percussion (frame drums, bones) for vocal ensembles, dance or incidental
music (one might use contrasting ensembles for Greeks and Trojans). A
useable lyre can be built from a wooden salad bowl, three sticks (2 for
arms, one for the cross piece) and a rawhide skin. Gut strings can be
handwound from sausage casings bought at a local butcher. The tuning of the
four-toned lyre was probably in a single tetrachord. Reconstructing auloi
is trickier, but you might like to start by listening to Korean pi'ri
playing. Someone in California (Jim French? -- help me out, Kraig) has had
some success in making auloi.

If duplicating the original instruments isn't your thing, but you'd like to
explore later greek and hellenistic tunings, Lou Harrison came up with a
easy substitute for a lyre or kithara - put mandolin machines on a guitar,
so that one can have a pair of full tetrachords. Classical lyre technique
was probably limited to playing open strings and samisen-style full plectrum
strokes with the strings stopped autoharp-style, but natural harmonics
_could_ have been used as well.

I like M.L. West's book on Greek music as well as Douglas Leedy's article on
singing in Greek and Latin (in the Roland Jackson _Festschrift_)

On the other hand, if you'd like to work, like Partch, in a classical spirit
but not letter, then just let your imagination loose.

From: Neil Haverstick <STICK@USWEST.NET>
> Here's one for you tuning historians...I got a call to possibly get
> involved in a play here in Denver about the Trojan wars.