Letters from Circe’s Island: Dev Log #8

LINK TO SHEET MUSIC (Melody Reference, Transformation of Picus, Aiaia)

Hello again, it's Anna from Devlog 2! Now that we’re further into the development cycle for Aiaia, I can talk about my main role on the team- the composer. 

Scoring Aiaia has been unlike any of the other musical projects I’ve worked on. I’ve been playing flute for over 12 years and composing on and off for over 10, so I have a decent amount of experience when it comes to the world of music. I’ve also gotten to write music for multiple different games while at Kent State! However, I’ve never gotten to work with music quite this old- or quite this fragmented. 

When I agreed to compose for Aiaia, I knew I wanted to incorporate as much of real Ancient Greek music as I possibly could. Early on, I reached out to the Ethnomusicology department here at Kent State, hoping they might be able to point me in the right direction. There, I spoke with Dr. Rosemary Heredos, a Kent State professor of musicology and expert in early music. Although Dr. Heredos specializes in Byzantine chant, her insight was still incredibly helpful. 

Ancient Greek music is constructed differently from modern music. Modern modes, also known as scales, are generally built off of one note, called the tonic, which then ascends in a certain order of whole and half steps until it reaches that tonic in the next octave. This ascension (or descent) could theoretically continue until the notes are so high or low they are no longer audible. Ancient Greek modes have a similarly functioning note called the Mese, however the mode does not ascend from there. Instead, the Mese sits in the middle of the progression, with a grouping of four notes called a tetrachord on either side. These modes also generally functioned within the span of one octave, sometimes two. Probably one of the most confusing differences between the two are the names- there are many names of modes that are used for both modern and antique modes, however the modes they apply to do not sound the same (i.e. Ancient Greek Phrygian sounds different than modern Phrygian). 

Another characteristic of Ancient Greek music is the lowered seventh. In the two most most common modern modes, Ionian (major) and Aeolian (natural minor), the 7th, or penultimate note of the scale is only a half step below the tonic. As a result, many western ears hear a lowered seventh as sounding “old” or “antique.” 

I didn’t realize that we actually have surviving fragments of Ancient Greek musical notation- it wasn’t until much later in my research that I came across Pöhlmann and West’s Database of Ancient Greek Music (2001), which details and transcribes a wide variety of Ancient Greek artifacts featuring musical notation. My work would have been borderline impossible without these transcriptions. 

After some scope cuts, my research has culminated in two pieces- one scoring the island of Aiaia, and the other scoring the transformation of Picus. 

Aiaia

The music of Aiaia (the island, not the game- all references to the game are italicized) is based around two different fragments of papyrus. 

The theme begins with a melody based on Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 2436, in the University of Oxford’s papyrology collection. The second half of the piece is based around the first column of P. Yale CtYBR inv. 4510. 

These specific fragments were chosen for their lyrical content- while full translations are not provided by Pöhlmann and West, each fragment’s textual content gets a brief description. One fragment is supposedly magical in content, and the other describes a natural landscape. I felt that both of these were fairly relevant to the setting of Aiaia.

Both melodies were not preserved in their entirety. Rather than trying to fill in the gaps myself and keep the lines in tact chronologically, I decided to approach each melody as more of a collage of the lines I had available to me. I tried to keep the accidentals (sharps and flats outside of the key) as accurate as I could, however there were a couple I omitted because I just didn’t like how they sounded. 

The main melody of the theme of Aiaia is carried by the flute, emulating the Ancient Greek plagiaulos. I’ve been playing flute for over a decade, so I’m glad there’s an Ancient Greek equivalent. This melody is adorned by and eventually taken over by the aulos, an Ancient Greek double-fluted reed instrument. The sound of the aulos is a mix between the reediness and color of a saxophone with the round and breathy tone of a recorder. I will talk about the process of nailing that sound down digitally in a bit. 

The engine of the peice lies in the two different lyre parts. The more complex part belongs to the epigonion, a large harp-like lyre, and is accompanied by flourishes on a the Lyra, a smaller lyre. Both parts mostly play driving arpeggios. It is a common misconception that Ancient Greek poetry was written to be read- it is instead thought to have been often performed accompanied. The lyre is thought to have been a very common instrument of accompaniment. 

While reconstructions, replicas, and artifacts of many Ancient Greek instruments do exist, very few of them are accessible to the general public for use (and for good reason- they’re often fragile). The few soundfonts (digital instruments) sampled from these instruments aren’t cheap, and are made specifically for a plugin costing hundreds of dollars. As such, I’ve had to get creative. Thankfully, the internet is full of free resources for composers. For some, sampling instruments and building soundfonts is a hobby they enjoy honing sharing with the world for free. 

The epigonion and Lyra were fairly simple to emulate- it took some combing through what was available, however the soundfonts themselves required very little extra adjusting. For the epigonion, I used DecentSamples’ Box Harp, and for the Lyra, I used the Marxophone sampled by David Hilowitz. 

The aulos is the most complex in terms of construction. It is actually a combination of three different soundfonts layered on top of each other. The first is Garageband’s saxophone preset. The other two are actually two different Duduk soundfonts, one by Pianobook user Raregod, and the other by user necatuss. Raregod’s has the tone I’m looking for, and I was able to adjust necatuss’s to emphasize the breath sounds and subtle stops between notes. 

In order to get the “aulos” to sound more natural, I recorded the midi input using probably the coolest thing I own, my AKAI Solo, an electronic wind synthesizer. It’s a bit like a digital keyboard in that it can be hooked up to a computer and used as an input device, however it’s much better suited to recording very lyrical and melodic lines than a keyboard as it allows me to naturally use my breath how I would playing a regular wind instrument. Of course, it takes some fine tuning to get it to play nice with my DAW, but it’s a lot faster than trying to reverse engineer natural dynamics and vibrato. 

Please look forward to our showcase on December 2nd, where you’ll have the chance to hear Aiaia performed live by myself and two other musicians from the Kent State New Music Ensemble! Thank you to Sarah and Tylor for agreeing to perform with me. 

Transformation of Picus

The music that plays during Picus’s transformation is primarily based on Mesomedes of Crete’s Hymn to Nemesis, which unlike the fragments that make up Aiaia’s theme, is preserved in its entirety. Nemesis is the Ancient Greek goddess of revenge and retribution, and in his hymn to her, Mesomedes describes the manner in which she unsympathetically doles out justice. I felt this was perfect to accompany Picus’s transformation.

As for the piece’s construction, I chose to give the melody to the piccolo. As a piccolo player myself, I have musically represented a bird on more than one occasion (once in the pit orchestra of the musical Children of Eden, and the other on the piece Patagonas Gigas by Nicholas Perry Clark). The high pitched, strident tone is highly reminiscent of bird calls. 

The rhythmic foundation of the piece is carried by a thumping bass drum (imitating an Ancient Greek frame drum), mimicking the rhythm of a heartbeat. The piece accelerandos as Picus’s transformation continues, his heart shrinking and beating faster and faster as he turns into a bird a fraction of his size. It finally levels out at around 300 beats per minute, which is within the range of a bird’s resting heart rate. 

This beat is adorned by a frantic rhythm on castanets, which emulate the Ancient Greek Krotalum. This rhythmic pattern actually follows a scansion, or rhythmic analysis, of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, specifically the lines describing Picus’s transformation. 

Similar to how much of Shakespeare is written in iambic pentameter, much of Ancient Greek literature is written in Dactylic Hexameter. ‘Hexameter’ describes a rhythmic meter made up of six units. ‘Dactylic’ describes the meter’s basic unit of construction, the dactyl, consisting of one long syllable followed by two short syllables. Units can also consist of ‘spondees,’ or a long syllable followed by a long syllable. Lines are always ended with a spondee. Because the Ancient Greek language had distinct letters and markings for long and short vowels, it is possible to “scan,” or analyze a text for its rhythmic reading. 

The piano part has no real academic basis- it is mostly there to dement the otherwise chipper-sounding melody and move the piece along. It is meant to be loud, discordant, and mocking. 

Finally, the piece ends with the toll of a large bell. I could not find proof of any kind of bell instrument in Ancient Greece similar to either modern tubular bells or church bells, however the modern associations with funeral tolls were too strong for me to pass up. Picus isn’t dead, but he may as well be to all those who once knew him. :-) 

Future Plans

One thing I haven’t yet gotten to work with that I would like to is microtonality. Most modern western music is written in the 12-edo, or 12 equal temperament tuning system. This divides an octave into 12 equidistant notes, which are the tones we give letter names (A through G). Although Ancient Greek music generally functions in a tuning that is recognizable to the Western ear, tuning wasn’t nearly as concrete as it is considered to be today. The “correct” tuning of a note varied depending on which philosopher you asked. 

Ancient Greek music also employed the use of quarter tones, specifically within the enharmonic genus. In the 12-edo tuning system, the smallest possible interval between notes is a half step (i.e. C to C#). A quarter tone would be the note halfway between a half step. 

I’m not even sure how I would begin to work with microtonality in Garageband, but I’m excited to figure it out.