Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Much of what we think of as Ancient Greek poetry, including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, was composed to be sung, frequently with the accompaniment of musical instruments. And while the Greeks left modern classicists many indications that music was omnipresent in society – from vases decorated with lyres, to melodic notation preserved on stone – the precise character and contours of the music has long been considered irreproducible. However, the UK Classicist and classical musician Armand D’Angour has spent years endeavouring to stitch the mysterious sounds of Ancient Greek music back together from large and small hints left behind. In 2017, his work culminated in a unique performance at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, intended to recreate the sounds of Greek music dating as far back as Homer’s era – roughly 700 BCE. This short documentary details the extraordinary research and musical expertise that made the concert possible, revealing remarkable sounds once thought lost to time. To learn more about what music sounded like in Ancient Greece, read D’Angour’s Aeon idea.
Via Open Culture
Director: Mike Tomlinson
Producer: Hannah Veale, James Tomalin
video
Architecture
Why a sculptor pivoted from gallery installations to big-box stores design
9 minutes
video
Physics
Spectacular fractal patterns emerge when electricity meets a wooden surface
4 minutes
video
Values and beliefs
How a God-fearing Jewish woman found atheism – and bacon – in her later years
9 minutes
video
War and peace
Before he leaves to go to war, Artem, 18, says goodbye to the man who raised him
12 minutes
video
Art
A mindbending trip that summons the forgotten women of surrealism
17 minutes
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
How machine learning can help historians decode ancient inscriptions
7 minutes
video
Animals and humans
What the ancient city of Kars looks like from the perspective of its stray dogs
9 minutes
video
Family life
A son of China’s former one-child policy remembers the sibling he never had
8 minutes
video
Making
Ceramic designs spin to life in a tactile meditation on the art of pottery
9 minutes