Ensemble Kérylos (Annie Bélis)

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Ensemble Kérylos (Annie Bélis) · Ensemble Kérylos plays music from classical antiquity, as close as possible to how it sounded then. The group was founded in the early 1990s by the French researcher Annie Bélis, born in 1951. She is an archaeologist, philologist and papyrologist, and works as a research director at the French CNRS. She studied in Paris and Athens and took her doctorate at the Sorbonne. She is also a musician herself: she learned to play piano, organ, flute and cello.

Music and breakthrough

The ensemble's work begins with the sources. Bélis deciphers music preserved on ancient papyri and stones, in a Greek musical notation. She then had the instruments of the time rebuilt with French and Spanish instrument makers, such as the lyre and the kithara, on the basis of archaeological finds. Only then can the ensemble play the pieces. In 1996 the CD De la pierre au son: Musiques de l'Antiquité grecque et romaine appeared. In 2016 came D'Euripide aux premiers chrétiens, with new performances based on more recent research and the first recording of a reconstructed Roman kithara.

Influence

Kérylos's recordings let us hear how far back the history of sung melodies goes. The fragment from Euripides' Orestes dates from the fifth century BC, the first Delphic Hymn from the second century BC, and the Epitaph of Seikilos from around the year 100. It remains a reconstruction: nobody knows exactly how this music sounded, but Bélis tries, with scientific evidence, to come as close as possible.

Listening

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  Épitaphe de Seikilos · Ensemble Kérylos (Annie Bélis), 100
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  Premier hymne delphique · Ensemble Kérylos (Annie Bélis), -138
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  Oreste (Euripides) · Ensemble Kérylos (Annie Bélis), -408

See also

• Ancient Greece