Synaulia

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

Synaulia is a group of musicians, archaeologists, palaeontologists and choreographers who reconstruct music and dance from antiquity, especially from the Etruscan and Roman periods. The name comes from the ancient Greek word synaulia, which in ancient Rome denoted a group of mainly wind instruments. The group was founded in 1995 by the Italian palaeo-organologist Walter Maioli and the choreographer and anthropologist Natalie Van Ravenstein, at first with the support of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (the National Museum of Antiquities) in Leiden.

Music and breakthrough

At first the work was mainly educational: building copies of ancient instruments for the Dutch archaeological centre Archeon. Later the research expanded to the music and dance of Italy, especially of ancient Rome. Because no musical notation from that time has survived, the reconstruction relies on pictorial material, texts, customs and comparative research. The group built wind instruments such as the syrinx, tibiae, cornu and tuba, string instruments such as the lyre, cithara and pandura, and percussion instruments such as the tympanum, cymbal and sistrum. The results were used for films, series and documentaries about ancient Rome, including Gladiator by Ridley Scott and the television series Rome.

Influence

Synaulia is not a pop group. The ensemble belongs in an encyclopedia of pop music because it shows how old the making of music with wind, strings and percussion is, and how film music sometimes tries to approximate a lost sound.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1996Music from Ancient Rome, Volume 1: Wind Instruments
• 2002Music from Ancient Rome, Volume 2: String Instruments