Ancient Greek Magic, by Michael Levy

Ancient Greek Magic

by Michael Levy

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1.	Hymn to Hecate 05:00	info	buy track
2.	Pygmalion's Yearning for Galatea 03:00	info	buy track
3.	The Sorcery of Circe 04:24	info	buy track
4.	Apollo Slew the Python 04:04	info	buy track
5.	The Theft of Hermes 02:15	info	buy track
6.	Trance of the Pythia 03:26	info	buy track
7.	The Discord of Eris 03:31	info	buy track
8.	The Silver Light of Selene 04:15	info	buy track
9.	Ancient Greek Magic 04:35	info	buy track

about

Attempting to conjure some ancient Greek magic...with a potion of tortoise shell & shard of goats horn! The recreated ancient Greek tortoise shell lyre featured in this album, was custom-made for me in modern Greece, by Luthieros:

www.luthieros.com

The recreated lyre features an actual foraged Greek land tortoise shell as a resonator, a soundboard of goat skin, gut strings & a plectrum of carved goats’ horn - about the nearest thing one can get, to being able to take the Elgin lyre out of its display cabinet at the British Museum & actually being able to play on it!

The album cover of this release, features a statue of Hecate, the ancient Greek goddess of magic & the miraculously surviving 2,400-year-old Elgin lyre (an ancient Greek tortoise shell lyre preserved in the British Museum), whose ancient musical magic I attempt to evoke in the original musical creations for recreated tortoise shell lyre which feature in this release.

In my efforts to 'carry on where the ancients left off', I like to experiment in specific sections of the melodies featured in this album, with a subtle fusion of both ancient lyre timbres and contemporary studio effects, which include the use of reverbs sampled from actual caves & attempting to evoke a dream-like feel to the music, by sometimes adding delays to specific phrases.

In keeping with the essence of magic & mysticism in ancient Greek mythology which I set out to convey in this release, there are 9 tracks I settled on to include in this compilation. The number 9 had a great deal of mythological significance during classical antiquity. Indeed, there were nine Muses in Greek mythology - Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Erato (erotic poetry), Euterpe (lyric poetry), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (song), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy) and Urania (astronomy).

Also, according to Greek mythology, it takes nine days for an anvil to fall from heaven to earth, and nine more to fall from earth to Tartarus. According to the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo. Leto laboured for nine days and nine nights to give birth to her son, Apollo, the ancient Greek god of music.

credits

released June 6, 2022

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about

Michael Levy UK

Michael Levy is a composer for the recreated lyres of antiquity,

Michael has collaborated with the Rufus Wainwright - Rufus Orchestrated Michael's "Hymn to Zeus" in 2 scenes of his second opera, "Hadrian".

In 2022 - 2023, Michael collaborated with the iconic American artist, Jeff Koons – his music for ancient Greek kithara was the soundscape of Koon’s sculpture, “Apollo Kithara”. ... more

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