Join World History Encyclopedia for a conversation with Michael Levy, a prolific ancient lyre composer, about his inspirations and knowledge of the instrument. If you want to hear Michael perform, be sure to check out our video interview below.

Kelly (WHE): Let’s start with the inspiration behind your musical pursuits. Why lyre? Why did you start playing the lyre?

Michael Levy: Why not? Going back to my interest in all things ancient and mystical when I was 14, I just stumbled across cassette tapes from the era of the late, great David Munro, who was the first person to really start recreating the music of the medieval era and the Renaissance. The most attractive thing about this music I found was the quality of the transfer. I've never heard that in any other type of music. I've been to museums in the past, but as soon as I heard his Crusade-era music, I felt like I was in some medieval castle.

Playing the lyre is like playing the harp, guitar and mandolin in one instrument. It's like a portable orchestra.

It’s this immersive quality that music has, and it’s what got me into classical music in the first place. As for the actual lyre, when I was 14 I happened to hear this recording by classical guitarists John Williams and Julian Bream called "Together," which was Ravel's composition for "Dead Princess." A gorgeous arrangement of Peacock Dance. There are all these modal parts and it sounds like a lyre. Then about 25 years passed, until around 2006; I was just randomly looking for some interesting CDs on Amazon, and I discovered something called Music from the Time of Jesus and the Second Temple in Jerusalem. In my notes, I discovered that the modern hobby of the lyre used in the recording was played by Levites, who may have been my own ancient Levitical ancestors.

I got my first lyre on eBay and it was something I taught myself and put some stuff on YouTube in early 2006. YouTube was new at the time and has only progressed from there. The great thing about YouTube is that you can get a lot of feedback, both constructive and destructive, and I'm just trying to improve myself through different types of lyres. I bought a more expensive one in 2011 thanks to a recommendation. Then, randomly, in 2014, I received an email from Luthieros in Thessaloniki, Greece, who were doing the same thing as me, but in Greece. They are recreating the ancient Greek lyre for passionate experimental modern musicians like me. Thanks to my collaboration with Luthieros, I bought a kithara and a tortoise shell lyre - real tortoise shell found in the forests of Thessaloniki, and some beautiful goat horns.

Kelly: That's awesome because it reminds me of the mythical origins of the lyre, which was invented by baby Hermes on his first day of life out of a tortoise shell.

Michael: Yes. That has been the inspiration for my latest album. It was called the Cave of Hermes, as in imagining the first tune that Hermes might have played in his cave.

Kelly: Awesome. So, you have multiple different lyres?

Michael: Yes. I had a kithara - which is where the modern name of the guitar comes from - which had a very deep, almost guitar-like sound, and a lyre with a tortoiseshell chime.

Kelly: They're obviously different in size and shape. Do they all require different playing techniques?

Michael: Yes. The playing technique is a mixture of what I've inferred from old photos of lyre players. When you see harp players in ancient Greek pottery and paintings, you always have their left hand blocking a particular string while a nice little thick plectrum is doing its thing. It's not like a harp where you can block the strings to stop unwanted sustain. You block out the strings you don't want to play and leave open the strings you do want to play so you can create *** .

This is deduced from illustrations on ancient Greek pottery, and in parts of Africa the lyre is still played today; in the Eritrean Krar this block and strumming technique is still alive and well in Eritrea. In Egypt they play the Simsimiyya, which is a beautiful tremolo. So that's where I got the vibrato from, kind of like a mandolin. Playing the lyre is like playing a harp, guitar and mandolin in one instrument. It's actually like a portable orchestra.

Kelly: Awesome!

Michael: Kithara has a deeper tone, though. In ancient Greek music, kithara was played only by professionals, while chelys (Greek for tortoise-shell lyre) were used at home, for example at symposiums at ancient Greek drinking parties. Plato during the Warring States period advocated using the lyre to teach young boys music theory because the notes of the lyre were clear and pure.

The construction of kithara is interesting. Some scholars believe they were used as a vibrato mechanism. The way the Luthieros construct it is that they have a movable crossbar (yoke) that, by applying pressure to it, creates glide and vibrato. But it [the trill mechanism] is only hypothetical, as there are no extant examples of the original ancient Greek kithara to confirm with certainty the possibility of a trill mechanism. However, as a strong argument against this hypothesis, there is actually a three-dimensional fragment of the sculpture in the frieze of the Parthenon. This particular part of the kithara, depicts the connection between the arms and the crossbar. This sculpture clearly shows that the arms of the kithara are wrapped around the crossbar, so any kind of vibrato mechanism is not possible. This structure is more likely a suspension bridge. It provides an equal and opposite response to the downward pull of the string. That's what most academics tend to think, but something with a vibrato mechanism sounds great. So, if we can improve upon what the ancient Greeks did, so be it. This is what I want to do. I wanted to carry this new ancestral music. I call it a new take on the ancient lyre reimagined for the 21st century and beyond.

Kelly: Does everything you know about the lyre come from surviving images?

Michael: Yes. A few tortoiseshell lyres have survived, such as the Elgin lyre in the British Museum, which I had the pleasure of seeing a few years ago. In addition, there are surviving ancient Egyptian lyres. I got a replica of the Leiden lyre from Luthieros, which is preserved in Leiden and dates to around 1500 BC. This is an amazing thing. As far as ancient Greek lyres go, only the tortoise-shell lyre seems to have survived, which they called the chelys lyre. Unfortunately, there are no extant examples of the kithara, as it must have been made of wood and was very light. Wood rots more easily than tortoise shell.

Kelly: At least you have tortoise shell. Apparently from the surviving images you can already see how they would have played them.

Michael: The great thing about the tortoiseshell lyre is that because no tortoiseshell lyre is the same, every one sounds different.

Kelly: If they all sound different, how did you learn to play the lyre?

KITHARA is like a guitar without a fretboard.

Michael: That’s the beauty of it. This is related to Plato’s statement in The Republic that society is like a well-tuned lyre. Everyone is different, just like all the different lyres, different lyre strings, when put together they form a harmonious union. The challenge is to pick up the actual recreated instrument and improvise until you get something that sounds good. That's what's great about it.

Compared to the harp, on the ancient Greek lyre the bass strings were closer to the player rather than further away. The reason is simple; you can feel the sound of the instrument better if the bass strings are closest to you. The defining feature of a lyre is the small bridge through which the strings pass, just like a guitar. A kithara is like a guitar without a fretboard.

Kelly: Would you like to tell us something about ancient tuning methods? What does this mean and why is it important?

Michael: The ancient method of tuning has two components. First, we have what is called intonation.

That's the exact ratio of how intervals are formed. The other aspect is that we have almost forgotten these wonderful ancient modes in modern, very standardized Western music, and all we have are major and minor keys. For example, ancient Greek patterns have all different qualities.

In ancient times they only used intonation. The basic concept dates back to ancient Mesopotamia, when they created the first fretted lutes. They conducted experiments to work out where frets could be placed on these lutes, but it was not until the time of Pythagoras that experiments were conducted on monochords, which were one string with different bridges on it, leading to the discovery These beautiful and pure intervals are formed in specific proportions. They are much purer than the music we are used to in modern equal temperament because they use whole number ratios.

Let us begin with the fourth of Pythagoras. The ratio discovered by Pythagoras was 4:3. If you have a string and you split it into three quarters, it's going to be a nice, pure sound. Then, if you divide the string into thirds, the ratio is 3:2, or a perfect fifth. Then, if you split the string in half, that's a 2:1 ratio, and that's what we call an octave. These are the three basic intervals of pure intonation that you get in Pythagoras. The reason why he only uses these three intervals? And it's all because of something else that's really weird, which is his numerical cosmology. These ratios are described as 4:3, 3:2, 2:1, and they all conform to the Pythagorean tetrachotomy. It's a sacred symbol, almost like a mathematical religion, and they believe that the tetrad is the way space itself is organized. It also symbolizes the four elements of fire, water, earth and air.

This is where the musical bit comes in, because any of the ratios discovered by Pythagoras can fit into this tetrad. He was interested in the mystery of it, but that didn't really take into account the musicality because then you have one interval, the third. Hundreds of years later, the Greco-Roman music theorist Ptolemy approached music in a different way. He was concerned that the sound of music was harmonious, beautiful, and harmonious, and he sought a scientific reason to explain why this was so. He listened to how musicians tuned by ear and then worked out the math from that. Then we came up with the third one, the pure third one, which is a ratio of 5:4.

Now, into mode! The bland major and minor keys that we have in Western music today are great for symphonies and things where you can transpose different keys and keep the same proportions between them, because each proportion is artificially equal, it'll be slightly out of tune, but it gave us the works of Mozart and Beethoven. However, equal temperament and major and minor can be boring, and a whole world of musical expression is lost. In fact, in the Roman Republic, Plato described some modes, and his favorite mode sounded a bit like a minor, but not only was it a minor, it had this intensity, and, according to him, it inspired battle Courage. This is the Doric mode of ancient Greece. Now here it gets even more confusing because in the early Middle Ages scholars gave the original Greek patterns incorrect Greek names.

There is nothing original about ancient music because nothing has changed in the way our brains structure the world, and we are only about 2 generations removed from 2,000 years ago. However, the music theory of the Greeks was very precise. Special numerical ratios give you these geometrically pure intervals. When you use such pure intervals, you don't need all these overdone harmonies. That's why I love the lyre; for years I've been trying to find a way to play minimalist music without anything fancy. That's the beautiful thing when you start using these pure intonations, you don't need anything more complicated. Perfect fifths perfectly frame the melody, and it frees up your creativity to do whatever you want with the melody line. So that's why I use these wonderful modes and intonations.

Kelly: Is the lyre meant to be played with other instruments, or is it a separate instrument?

Michael: In sherds of pottery it is often accompanied by an aulos, an oboe played simultaneously by the same performer.

It’s still taught in schools that harmony was invented in some mysterious way in the Middle Ages, but that’s not true! The whole thing is a problem, a basic logical error that confuses the first codification of harmony in the early Middle Ages with the first creation of harmony, which dates back to the time when humans sang, because every human singer had a different vocal pitch.

Take the Aka Pygmies of Central Africa. They were completely uninfluenced by the Western world and they sang with beautiful polyphony. Ancient texts mention the use of harmony; Plato described the best way to teach musical theory to young boys. In addition to saying that they should use the notes of the lyre because they are pure and sweet, he also told teachers that they should avoid using the day's complex playing exercises, such as playing long notes with two short notes and two tunes together. Everything we do today, the ancients did very happily. The only thing you can't do in pure intonation is transpose to a different key.

Kelly: But beyond that, they're still instruments that were created to be played with other instruments.

Michael: Yes, of course. By definition, aulos play two notes simultaneously, where you can play counterpoint. There are aulos preserved in the Louvre, and there is also Barnaby Brown who specializes in playing aulos. You can find him on YouTube. It's amazing. It sounds like two instruments are being played at the same time.

Kelly: Would you like to tell us a little about your track Hymn to the Stars? Its inspiration, its creation, and what lyre do you play?

Michael: I play this on my kithara. I'm not a trained singer, I have this baritone vocal range, which is annoying because it's very limited. I can't sing very high, and I can't sing very low. I only had one octave to work with. It's just a simple sound line, and the whole thing goes back to the days of ancient Greece, when kithara was used to recite epic poems. The Iliad, for example, was meant to be played to musical accompaniment, and it had all these detailed rhythm tables and things that you could only remember if you were reciting it to the tune.

The same goes for the sixth Orpheus' Hymn to the Stars, dedicated to Astron. I really like astronomy and music; I'm kind of a geek in that regard. I think this should be a cool thing to do and very inspiring. It's very dramatic, and you can imagine some ancient Greeks looking up at what they thought were these rotating celestial spheres. Again, this has to do with musical intervals. They believed that all the stars were on this giant sphere as they moved together across the sky. This movement itself produced a sound that no one else could hear, although they thought Pythagoras might have been able to hear it, since he successfully derived the ratios of these intervals I mentioned earlier.

For Sixth Orphic Hymn, I had to do something very dramatic, and the musical pattern was beautiful. This is what we call the Phrygian mode in ancient Greece, but not to be confused with the medieval Phrygian mode, because in the Middle Ages, medieval scholars gave all the original Greek modes the wrong Greek name, and it was very confusing. . So basically, the original ancient Greek Phrygian pattern was the equivalent interval of D to D on the white notes of the piano.

The ancient Greeks didn't call them modes, they were composed of the combination of two tetrachords that make up these things. The music theory of the Greeks was intricate. There is nothing simple or primitive about ancient Greek music. It's really progressive and that's why I think back to the forgotten stuff in Western music. Melodic sound, pure intonation, and bringing it into my own music, into the 21st century, finding the forgotten spiritual spots in music in our sad nightmare of commercialized contemporary pop music. I just wanted to do something completely new, make new music for the ancient lyre, create this new meditative sound.

Kelly: Do you have a favorite song that you wrote?

Michael: A couple actually! But one I call a hymn to Zeus. It's a dreamy scene where all you have are these beautiful, pure intervals of fifths and fourths. That's all.

Kelly: It's absolutely beautiful. Michael, thank you so much for joining me!

Michael: My pleasure.

Thank you, Kelly.