Customer Reviews

Music of Ancient Sumerians Egyptians & Greek

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
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This is the album by Ensemble De Organographia (Gayle Stuwe Neuman and Phlip Neuman). Probably you had heard thier CDs "Music of the Ancient Greeks" and "Carnevale! Festive Music of 16th century Italy".
Disc consists of 3 sets of Antique World music. Ancient Greek Music newly founded at Oxyrhinchus in Egypt (world premiere recording); music from ancient city Ugarit (XIII century B.C.) - Sumero-Babylonian music (including oldest notated music in the history of humankind); music of the Egyptians reconstructed after descriptions by Plutarch and Apuleius.
Ensemble De Organographia re-creates this music with such love and unerstanding of the ancient cultures, that you nearly feel the breezes of the Mediterranean sea and see the landscapes of its shores. They perform it as a music of still living folk tradition.
Of course you wouldn`t find here ancient analog of the 5th Beethoven`s symphony:)
The value of this music is that you could understand internal world and spirituality of the ancient people. It`s a miracle...
I had heard different "restorations" of the Music of the Ancient World - and this work by Ensemble De Organographia is simply the best!!! A must for the lover of the Antique culture.
And it`s hard for me to understand why works by Synaulia and Atrium Musicae De Madrid are so popular.
You could find CDs by Ensemble De Organographia on website by North Pacific Music. There you would find sound samples.

My real rate of this CD - 10 stars!!!!

You could also try CD "Music in the Age of the Pyramids" by Rafael Perez Arroyo (released in Europe by NAR). He uses coptic music as a model for reconsruction of the music of the Ancient Egypt.

Someone finally managed to figure out what ancient music would have sounded like. Up until now, the majority of the attempts at reconstructing ancient music have simply been either A. BAD or B. AFFECTED. (In particular, there were some really lousy "reconstructions" done by a group in Spain.) As a student of classical Chinese music, and a linguist, I've always had an interest in what ancient Western and Middle Eastern music would have sounded like and had something to compare "reconstructions" to since classical Chinese music IS ancient music, dating from the Bronze age. (The Chinese were the one group of ancient civilizations that kept their music intact.) The Chinese scale is remarkably similar to the ancient Greek scale (Chinese scale lacks the "fa" note deliberately since Confucians thought this note drove men insane...and interestingly enough this note is necessary to write modern military music, like Sousa marches.) I've played the 21-string Guzheng for many years now and been amazed how ancient it sounds. This gives me a comparison to listen to reconstructions of Western and Middle Eastern ancient music. Up until this album, everybody else was playing the songs too slow without any emotion and trying to make their reconstructions sound like modern symphony music. Ancient music was first and foremost folk music. Even the religious music was folk music which had been codified over the years. True, in both China and Greece and Rome there were a few "symphonies" and "high-brow" compositions, but NONE of those survied in the west (and none is popular in China) since what survives is what common people (not musicologists) like. These guys nailed it. This album is definitely worth buying. (Ignore the negative comments by another reviewer which were dumb anyway.)

When it comes to reconstructing Ancient Greek music, we can be pretty sure of the melodies; everything else is guesswork -- though in this case it's well-educated guesswork, drawing on artistic and literary representations of musicians at work. The results seem entirely convincing to me. It sounds like Folk Music, from some rich and sophisticated culture that's not quite European; and perhaps more to the point, it sounds utterly delightful. One can imagine Herodotus or Hypatia listening to music like this and enjoying it, just as a modern person can.
In the case of the music from cultures older than that of Greece, the reconstruction is of course less certain; but because De Organographia have made such a good job of the Greek tunes, I'm inclined to trust them with the older stuff, too. The Hurrian music, from 1200 BCE, is particularly interesting: many of the little tunes are catchy in a vaguely Middle-Eastern kind of way, and the one intact hymn is (when one grows accustomed to its strangeness) quite hypnotic and obscurely moving, rather in the manner of the plainchant used in Eastern Churches.
All in all I think this is as near as we can ever hope to get to hearing the real sound of Ancient Music. Those who are fascinated by the cultures of the distant past will love it.

this cd was all i hoped for. It is beautiful and almost seems to sweep the listener away it is so vividly done. It is steady as an ocean tide the tempos dont change drastically as in modern music but has a peaceful almost philosophical cadence to it. I highly reccomend these recordings.

I bought this CD because I wanted to hear something different, and this was certainly it. I agree with all the positive reviews that came before me, but the amazing scholarship involved aside, this music just picks you up and carries you away to the past, yes, but also wherever you want to go with it. There are soothing, cool and quiet pieces great for meditation, a contraband "donkey tune" which is actually kind of intriguing if you understand that it was "sinful" because it represents the Egyptian god, Set - who was seen as pure evil. I mean, who'd have the nerve to write music like that back then? Then there's a Greek bagpipe and clapping number that totally rocks. If you can sit still when you listen to it, you may have a medical problem.

Definitely buy this CD, but don't just listen to it once, because each time you hear it is a revelation and opens up new questions: Why are there elements of Native American music in the Egyptian? Are modern Chinese and Japanese people descended from the Sumerians? How can some of this music be so quirky, even abrasive, and yet so addictive? I love it!

I really enjoyed this CD and the variety of music and instrumentation utilized. It was organized well, also, not just an admixture of various ancient songs. Rather, the CD lists ancient Greek selections first (tracks 1-10), ancient Sumerian & Babylonian songs (tracks 11-20) and then ancient Egyptioan selections (tracks 21-25). The description of each song's origin and some information about the various instruments used is very valuable for anyone who likes either history or ethnomusicology, or both. My only complaint, and it is a light one, is that I bought the CD because I wanted some ancient Egyptian music, and it turns out, there were half as many Egyptian selections than from the other two regions. I would have prefered a more balenced amount of material from Sumer, Greece and Egypt. Other than that, this CD will be a fascinating and enjoyable experience for anyone who appreciates history and likes to get out of the conventional musical borders!

This is the only "historically informed recording" I know of where one will find the scattered fragments of music from Ugarit and earlier Mesopotamian civilizations as well as from ancient Egypt, in addition to some fragments of Greek music not published earlier by this ensemble. As such, its importance for students of the music of the Ancient Near East is invaluable. It has extensive liner notes like its predecessor (although never enough for this student) and good references to the source materials.

in the absence of a time machine (and/or advanced scholarship on the subject), this collection is probably about as good as it gets for music of the ancient Mediterranean and Levantine. while i recognize that like or dislike of music is as much as a matter of taste as anything, these tracks do seem to me to reflect something of the flavor of the texts and visual arts of the periods it aims to portray. it's also interesting to hear representations of music from civilizations predating plainchant of the dark ages.

This is a very good attempt at reconstructing ancient music (attempt because in the quest for the past, we can never get all the way there!). The tunes are beautiful and I found them mesmerizing. A must have for any aficionado of early music.