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performed, “this song should be sung in the highest tones and sounds loud”. Notes carved in stone, like on Seikilos’ stele, are very rare. However, an inscription on the Athenian Treasury in the Apollo sanctuary in Delphi reveals the name of two composers, Athenaeus and Limenius. They wrote the choir music for a performance in the sanctuary in 127 BC, and the text and the notes were later carved on one of the treasury’s outer walls. Even though the surviving evidence is sparse, scholars are in fairly broad agreement that a system of musical notation existed in the Greek world in the 3rd century BC – perhaps even as early as the 4th century. There were actually two systems of notation – one for vocal and one for instrumental music. Probably only professional musicians, composers and choir conductors were able to read them. The choir learned the tune by listening to the music and hearing others sing the text. Although only few notes survive, there is a wealth and diversity of other evidence for music in the Greek world: fragments of musical instruments, models of instruments (fig. 2), statues and sculptures of men and women with musical instruments, reliefs and numerous musical scenes on Greek vases. These made the reconstruction of a large number of instruments possible, enabling the small fragments of music we do have to be performed. In the winter of 2010 the Greek music group Lyravlos visited the National Museum and performed music using authentic copies of ancient instruments (fig. 3). However, how close we are able to come to the “sound of Antiquity” is very much an open question. BODIL BUNDGAARD RASMUSSEN
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