>> I don't think anyone has yet answered this query, or if they did so I >> missed it. And, sorry, I have no real information to offer. All I remember >> is hearing a classics lecturer telling my librarianship students that our >> knowledge of the ancient world is a patchwork of light and dark, and that >> music, unfortunately, is "a dark area". > >Simon, > >Thanks for your reply on this. I too remember some Latin master in my dim >and distant school days telling me that no one knew what Classical Roman (or >Greek) music sounded like. But scholarship has moved on and I wondered if >anyone had any inkling now of what it might have been like. Did the Roman >shepherds on their reeds and straws sound like a skillful Irish musician or >South African kwelo player on a simple six-holed pipe? There must too, have >been world-class musicians in Virgil's day who, musically speaking, were the >equivalent of some of the great Roman writers. I am sure they did a bit >more than compose for 'oaten pipes'. > >It is just that I would like to get some sort of mental picture of what sort >of sound Amaryllis, for example, in Eclogue I might have been hearing. > >Patrick Roper >
It would probably be safe to say that professional Roman musicians used the same instruments as Greek, and there are recordings available of ancient Greek music played on reproductions of ancient instruments and on modern "peasant" instruments. I can't guarantee that someone in the Latin countryside would have sounded exactly the same, but one of these recordings might be a good place to turn -- I've long had a copy of the one by Gregorio Paniagua and the Atrium Musicae of Madrid, but at least two others have come out in the past decade or so. James L. P. Butrica Department of Classics The Memorial University of Newfoundland St. John's NL A1C 5S7 (709) 737-7914 / (709) 753-5799 (home) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
