#seikilos

In 2000 we recorded for the first time the oldest surviving complete musical composition, including musical notation, from anywhere in the world. We have performed ''Epitaph of Seikilos'' many times during our concerts (for Daemonia Nymphe) with different orchestration and vocals but this is the only time that we recorded it live in the recording studio. With Daemonia Nymphe we intend to record it again in the near future, but for now please have a listen to our (first) version of one of the most important pieces in music history.

So yesterday, I learned about the Seikilos epitaph.

Per Wikipedia and this much longer article from Antigone Journal, the Seikilos epitaph is a complete four-line Greek lyric poem. It was carved into a short marble stele sometime in maybe the 1st century CE, maybe the 2nd. The stele was then set, and later discovered, near the city of Tralles (close to modern-day Aydin, in Turkey).

Before the poem is a two-line couplet that can be translated as:

I am an image and a stone; Seikilos sets me up here As a long-lasting sign of undying memory.

--and then following the poem the name of the artist/author, either "Seikilos to Euterpe" or "Seikilos, son of Euterpres". In between those two points, though, is the poem itself, which I fucking love. A translation of it might read:

While you live, shine! Have no grief at all. Life exists only for a short while and Time demands his due.

--which tbh would be fabulous enough, but...

carved above the words

is musical notation.

The Seikilos epitaph is the record of a two-thousand-year-old song.

And like anything that's That Old, there's of course a fair bit of academic infighting regarding:

whether the stele is really a gravemarker or just the work of a silly lil guy going big with publishing his masterpiece;

whether it was really written as early (or as late) as people think, based on what seems to be Ye Olde Handwriting Analysis;

and even what the actual song would have actually sounded like, because the notation only tells us the pitch, duration, and movement of the sung line, and not, like, what's emphasized/stressed, the rhythm, the modulations, the scale--

But.

Unlike a lot of ancient music... we do have all the melody. And we have all the words. And so there are people out there who have come up with reconstructions and interpretations-- many of them sad, most of them sweet, all of them fitting for a tombstone...

And then there's this one. A live performance by YK Band, sung as a duet and played on a Tartessian lyre and frame drum. It starts with the simple melody as written on the stele, and then transitions to their version of how the song could, with just as much evidence as any other interpretation, have been sung...

And it's joyous.

I love this. It reminds me that history is amazing. People are amazing. Two thousand years later, and because of the time someone put in to writing these words, the craft of the worker who made the stele, the historians and the musicians and the linguists and the teachers who constantly search and test and try to understand what came before so that we can understand where we came from, who we once were and who we might be again, and put what they learn back out into the world--

Because of all of them, I can sit here, alone and quiet at my computer, and hear someone very, very far away call out a laughing reminder to the dark unknown:

no sufras por nada en absoluto.

La vida dura poco,

As the nine days of Parentalia begin; a time to honour, venerate & remember our departed ancestors, the words of the oldest surviving musical composition from antiquity, the Epitaph of Seikilos come to mind:

"While you live, shine, have no grief at all, life exists only for a short while & time demands his due."

Comezaron os nove días de Parentalia; a ocasión para honrar, venerar e lembrar as ánimas dos nosos antepasados. Durante estes días lémbro as palabras da composición musical máis antiga que se conserva da antigüidade, o Epitafio de Sícilo:

"Mentres vivas, brilla, e non te lamentes nada. Que a vida é curta, e o tempo esixe o final".

Ὅσον ζῇς, φαίνου, μηδὲν ὅλως σὺ λυποῦ· πρὸς ὀλίγον ἐστὶ τὸ ζῆν, τὸ τέλος ὁ xρόνος ἀπαιτεῖ

“The inscription of the piece is “I am a tombstone, an image. Seikilos placed me here as an everlasting sign of deathless remembrance.” The lyric is four lines of text stating:

While you live, shine,

have no grief at all;

life exists only for a short while,

and time demands its toll.

Amazonomachie Une scène de combat entre Amazones et Grecs sur un lécythe (récipient à huile) en terre cuite datant du 5e siècle avant notre ère. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Hoe zou onze samenleving eruit zien als onderwijs geven betekende leren denken, samenwerken, zichzelf ontplooien door leerkrachten die werkelijk geïnformeerd waren op elk denkbaar terrein of de weg konden wijzen in…