Ensemble Kérylos

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

Ensemble Kérylos is a French ensemble that brings the music of classical antiquity to life. It was founded in the early 1990s by Annie Bélis, born in 1951, an archaeologist, philologist, papyrologist and musician, and a research director at the French CNRS. She specialises in the music of ancient Greece and Rome and herself studied piano, organ, flute and cello.

Music and breakthrough

The aim was to recreate the music of antiquity as faithfully as possible, in three steps. First Bélis deciphered musical papyri, as part of her scholarly work. Then she had the ancient instruments rebuilt, on the basis of archaeological material and with the help of the French and Spanish instrument makers J.-C. Condi and C. Gonzalez. Finally the ensemble performed the scores. Bélis worked, among other things, on a papyrus containing a Paean to Apollo by Mesomedes of Crete, and on a papyrus with a version of Medea by Carcinus, in which Medea does not kill her children.

Influence

The recordings Musiques de l'antiquité grecque (1996) and D'Euripide Aux Premiers Chrétiens (2016) let us hear the result. The sound is that of lyre, kithara and wind instruments, with singing in a strange-sounding scale. In this way the ensemble gives an impression of a musical world that we know only from fragments. The reconstructions remain scholarly hypotheses, but they make the oldest Western notation audible.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1996Musiques de l’antiquité grecque
• 2016D'Euripide Aux Premiers Chrétiens