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The Orphic Hymns on the Lyre – Lyre Sheet Music
32.00 €
“There is no benefit when music stands secret and hidden.” — Lucian
What came to be known as the Orphic Hymns is a collection of 87 hymns addressed to various deities, that constitute the greatest extant example of Orphic literature, the literature associated with the Orphic religion, or Orphism.
Orphism was a set of esoteric religious beliefs centered around the figure of Orpheus, worshipping what is believed to be an iteration of the god Dionysus, named Zagreus. Although evidence about Orphism is scarce, its members seemed to believe that the religion was indeed created by the divine bard himself. It is generally considered to have evolved from the previous Dionysian religion, another esoteric set of practices centered around the Dionysiac mysteries.
In our book, containing 14 melodies, we have decided to focus on the most well-known ancient Greek gods, those being the members of the Olympian Pantheon, known as the “Dodecatheon,” or “Twelve Gods,” plus Hades, the God of the Underworld, and, of course, Dionysus himself. These were the widely accepted greatest deities of the Pantheon, and it is these gods that were later interpreted into their Roman counterparts, taking on names still in use today, such as Jupiter, Juno, and Mars.
This is a curated selection of Orphic Hymns to the Gods to add to your lyre repertoire.
Song list: Zeus, Father of the Gods ✦ Hera, Queen of the Gods ✦ Poseidon, Lord of the Sea ✦ Demeter, The Mother ✦ Hestia, Home and Hearth ✦ Apollo, Radiant God ✦ Artemis, The Huntress ✦ Ares, Battle Born ✦ Aphrodite, Lady of Love ✦ Athena, Born of the Mind ✦ Hermes, The Unbound ✦ Hephaestus, The Smith God ✦ Dionysus, Orgiastic God of Wine ✦ Plouton, Lord of the Underworld
“This Sheet Music Book is our latest addition to our effort to enrich the available educational resources for lyre and lyre-like musical instruments,” Nikolaos Koumartzis, the series’ director, explains.
This book is part of the Lyre Sheet Music series, which features some of the greatest lyre players around the world, including Lina Palera, Thanasis Kleopas, Michael Levy, and Theodore Koumartzis.
Pages: 56 | Dimensions: 9 x 12 inches | sheet music for lyres or kitharas with 7 or more strings
_Credits
Nikolaos Koumartzis, D.Phil. (editor-in-chief)
Fotis Giantsios, M.Litt. (research director)
Lina Palera (composer)
32.00 €
A Lyre Sheet Music Series
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It's not a battle. It's about finding the right balance.
^ Linus, the legendary lyre teacher, along with one of his students, Musaeus. This is one of the earliest surviving school scenes, and it is depicted on an Attic red figured kylix, ca. 450-400 BCE. Attributed to Eritrea Painter. Musée du Louvre, Paris, France.
< Linus, the legendary lyre teacher, along with one of his students, Musaeus. This is one of the earliest surviving school scenes, and it is depicted on an Attic red figured kylix, ca. 450-400 BCE. Attributed to Eritrea Painter. Musée du Louvre, Paris, France.
Bringing Ancient Artifacts Back to Life
Re-inventing the ancient lyre and re-introducing it to the modern world is an act that can directly connect us to our ancient heritage. Giving a voice to a musical instrument silenced for two thousand years and more is our way of paying our deed to the great minds of the ancient world.
Sheet music books, also known as scorebooks or songbooks, played a vital role in popularising mainstream musical instruments since the first was published in 1501 in the Venetian Republic by Ottaviano Petrucci. With such an abundance of scorebooks for the guitar or the piano, it is not by accident that modern lyre players are striving to learn using educational material that was not designed for their instruments.
So, how can a lyre scorebook be published when there are so many different types of lyres out there with entirely different tunings, note orientation, or number of strings? The solution is straightforward (but not easy): we have to standardize the lyre as the modern classical guitar was back in the 19th century by Antonio de Torres Jurado, Ignacio Fleta, Hermann Hauser Sr., and Robert Bouchet.
And this is exactly what we have been up to for the last decade. So, this Sheet Music Book is our latest addition to our effort to enrich the available educational resources for the lyre and lyre-like musical instruments.
References
Hawkins, J. (1776). A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, Cambridge University Press.
King, A. H. (1968). Four Hundred Years of Music Printing, Trustees of the British Museum, London.
Pöhlmann, E. (1970). Denkmäler altgriechischer Musik. Sammlung, Übertragung und Erläuterung aller Fragmente und Fälschungen
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We only use top-quality papers and state-of-the-art printing technologies for our premium sheet music book series. The book is 9 x 12 inches in dimensions, making its reading easy and comfortable.
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The Orphic Hymns on the Lyre – Lyre Sheet Music
32.00 €
