The Second Delphic Hymn To Apollo

The trend that will return after this cultural fad of extreme electronic music (house,dubstep,...electronica) will be a sharp return to a very old acoustic tradition with soul (spiritual, not blues or country folk christian gospel), and will go further back than the guitar. The lyre and koto will come back into vogue.

The Second Delphic Hymn To Apollo : Dated 138-128 BC. One of the earliest manuscripts of music that we can still play and we know who composed it. It's made up of 10 songs that flow together into one composition.

What's cool to me is the Greek musical notation of the time. Their musical notes were like punctuations for letters, just like Hebrew cantation, not the musical scales we've learned in music class. I'm neither Greek nor Hebrew, so this is even cooler to me because I don't take the cultures for granted since I didn't grow up in them.

The meter, tempo, and key are all very foreign. I love love love the first few minutes, and then it enters a rhythm that I do like, but you probably need to be of the culture of the time or listen to the music for a while to really appreciate all of it.




ALSO: If anyone has the name of the bands that would go ahead of the Ottomans scaring the crap of their enemies playing music, please tell me. I think this type of military band starts with an M (mizer, mitre, something else?). I love the music, it's so powerful. Could you imagine opposing an army that is thundering with footsteps, AND playing beautiful, crashing, imperial music while they WALK TO KILL YOU AND DIE. All the while listening to cool tunes. If you see an army approaching you blasting music, you don't think you're fighting a sovereign, you're fighting a god. (Only example of this music I can even allude to is the "make way for Prince Ali" song in Alladin...sad).

Someone needs to do a dubstep remix of it. xD

Roparadise said:

Someone needs to do a dubstep remix of it. xD

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...I absolutely agree...It would totally work...

Outstanding post LakeForest. Love the scholarship and passion for ancient musical traditions. I seem to
remember some very ancient and less lively Greek music for Pericles, Phaedra, etc? I remember it was
Greek and one of the earliest series of poems placed to music. It was a classical drama with music backing
and on with lots of pathos, etc. I was into it when I discovered it but wouldn't be now.

I like your find much better. More lively. As far as the Ottoman piece in question, a search for ancient martial
music or marching compositions might turn up something.

Imagine discovering music used in daily life and warring of Hassan i Sabbah and his followers to induce the
assassin's state. Perfect for IM campaigns eh?

MEHTER! The type of band is Mehter! I was close

Thanks for reminding me that I can ask things online, let's call them engines, to search out information for me. I think I remembered it was Ottoman music as I was making this post and that's why I was all confused.

A good example of the legacy the type of music left is the culture of Europe in the East, but you don't even need to go that far East. This music is very much evident in Austria, and and impressed composers from Vienna so much that even Beethoven composed to the theme. Beethoven composed a Turkish March on piano, and you can clearly see its influence.

Modernized, with slight European-ization/Mediterranean-ization, is the great band Beirut and their wonderfully festive song Bratislava:


I'll be looking for music of Hassan i Sabbah and other leaders of the area because what I've found so far was a crazy punk band and another video of music performed by instruments made out of human bone or skulls. My search continue.

If anyone finds any video of this kind of music, or other military or ancient music, please send it my way or post it. I really like the stuff. It's very otherworldly, which goes to show how disconnected from this world I've become (I would say how disconnected we've become, but I don't want to judge).

LakeForest said:

The trend that will return after this cultural fad of extreme electronic music (house,dubstep,...electronica) will be a sharp return to a very old acoustic tradition with soul (spiritual, not blues or country folk christian gospel), and will go further back than the guitar. The lyre and koto will come back into vogue.

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Gene Rodenberry thought so too:

[video=youtube_share;M6tJQ05YJ58]http://youtu.be/M6tJQ05YJ58[/video]

B. Friendly said:

Gene Rodenberry thought so too:

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I have no idea why I didn't see this reply before, sorry!

I love the critique made in the episode, and it's one I agree with fully. The music has musical tone closer to what I'd expect in the middle ages as opposed to ancient music. It sounded like it was from an older time, but was dead and without spirit, but that was probably intended as the message.

There's a huge difference between learning from the merits of the past and wanting to live in the past.

To amend my initial speculation: The backlash against electronic music will be abrupt and will be because of people feeling a disconnect with modern development. This is a result of fewer and fewer people feeling like they're a part of the modernizing world or they support how it's developing. People will find a renewed spirit in their folk cultures and be happy working for their community again. This period might lead to stagnant development of certain communities who become further entrenched in their culture, and might even create division, but by returning to their roots, communities will grow again. Advancements in human civility have been made, and unless these truths are chosen to be forgotten, we will further our communication with differing cultures even by strengthening our own. From this, there will be a comfortable renewal in the spirit of global progress where we expand our identities and conception of what a human is, while maintaining our roots, and will be able to meld our traditions with new world developments and make a seamless transition to a technologically advanced, but calmly natural, life without fear of progress.

I say this because, and not to claim far-sight or clairvoyance, I saw dubstep taking off from a mile away about 10 years ago. Why? Not because it was new, electronic music has been around for decades, but because it wasn't "music" or like anything out at the time. The way I saw dubstep was that it was the natural sounds of a different world; the calls of animals in an alien jungle. That genre made my mind expand in a way no other music was, and it was doing it without lyrics or an agenda. It was letting me go where I wanted. There was absolutely no other type of media that was as liberating, but was readily accessible by everyone. A computer requires your conscious effort to go, study, and better yourself, but dubstep offered the type of freedom of thought that only came from mindlessness or drugs. It was an empty canvas.

Lyrics are going out of vogue. People don't want to be told things, they want to explore without a guide. They believe in themselves. They desperately want to revive themselves. The species is maturing out of adolescence.

Many people are so furious or depressed because they want to live, not because they're "finished," and this is the basis for my ideas: The enormous potential energy building up in the minds, hearts, loins of people who want to live will find the trigger it needs that has been suppressed for so long. Strong, inspiring music does wonders to this effect, but it has to be music that does not tell you how or what to think.

Haha I disagree on electronic music being a 'cultural fad'.

The majority of the electronic music heard at the moment on the radio/charts, is a watered-down sorry excuse of real electronic music, which, in it's various formats i have been listening to for about a decade.

It would be wrong to bracket real electronic music in with the weak shit in the mainstream at the moment.

Apart from that slight oversight, nice post

illfounded21 said:

Haha I disagree on electronic music being a 'cultural fad'.

The majority of the electronic music heard at the moment on the radio/charts, is a watered-down sorry excuse of real electronic music, which, in it's various formats i have been listening to for about a decade.

It would be wrong to bracket real electronic music in with the weak shit in the mainstream at the moment.

Apart from that slight oversight, nice post

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The current musical climate is very good, and it really always was.

I really was referring to the music on the radio as the fad, but I should have clarified. This genre is intensely personal, and the radio has to choose what sells. From having to cater to the public, you have people who claim to hate dubstep and electronic music all together. But, if you then show them the music you like, suddenly their idea of the genre changes. It has happened with every single person I have shown dubstep to, and initially they made fun of me asking why I listened to music without words.

I love electronic music as much as the next guy(8/16 bit music from old cracks/trainers? omgilovethem), and we both know the music we like will never get on the radio.

Electronic music only has one direction to evolve, and that's away from everything it has currently been associated with: partying, drugs, being hip on the latest trend, celebration of youth. This is the fad that will die down, and the irrational response will be a return to more acoustic sound for a time when people are fed up; a false, forced maturity.

Dubstep is a pretty good example of what happens when a great thing gets misused or entrusted in the hands of people that don't appreciate it, but appreciate what it can do for them.

Either we get the temporary backlash or we skip directly to where electronic music is treated with the same seriousness and composition as orchestras. This will depend on whether the people who enjoy the genre can respect and develop it beyond 90s House Music, and that will depend on the larger picture of how they see themselves fitting into the world.