Michael Levy: Composer for Lyre

“DISCOVERED BY RUFUS WAINWRIGHT! The  story of the incorporation of my ancient lyre theme, "Hymn to Zeus" in two scenes of Rufus Wainright's second opera, "Hadrian" was featured in an article in "The Globe and Mail" - one of the biggest daily newspapers in Canada! The full story can be found here  ” - Brad Wheeler

“King David's Lyre; Echoes of Ancient Israel Michael Levy has reconstructed ancient Hebrew music on his lyre. Michael Levy is truly an original -- although the music he plays is largley forgotten. He takes the oldest music in the world and plays them on the lyre -- the way it is meant to be played -- resuscitating the music back to life. There is something ancient, primal, & primordial to the music he creates. Michael is real passionate musician, and his music is one of my greatest personal discoveries I found last year. Other albums include "The Ancient Egyptian Harp" and "Ancient Landscapes.” - The Aramaic Herald

“My arrangement for solo lyre of the oldest known complete song so far known from antiquity, the 2000 year old ancient Greek drinking song, "Epitaph of Seikilos", has been featured in a newspaper story on he other side of the world, in the Australian Daily Telegraph.The complete story can be read here   ”

“I first found Michael Levy’s music by watching one of his YouTube videos that had him playing ancient Greek melodies. When you listen to his music, you’ll find that his mastery of the instrument is clear and his musical sensitivity and talent are also evident. In terms of his technique as well as sense of melody and rhythm, the pieces are intriguing.His thriving individuality and creative expression resulting in one of the most authentic ancient music recreations of our time.Thank you for this highly informative interview, it’s a good way for fans to get to know more about Michael Levy.” - Stuart

“Michael Levy’s extreme roots music and the oldest song in the world...Getting back to one’s roots via music is a venerable and worthwhile pursuit, but few have taken the quest as far as Michael Levy. He’s reconstructing the music of his ancestors from over 3000 years ago!Levy, a 40-something native of the UK, began exploring his musical heritage as a Klezmer fiddler, playing the old Jewish music of Eastern Europe. Perhaps the traditional scales of Klezmer piqued an interest in other unusual scales, as he later became a student of middle-eastern music, and then in the ancient music of the region, particularly lyre music.He has studied the lyres and lyre playing techniques of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians and Hebrews, among others. Written music and descriptions of ancient playing techniques exist, but they are scanty, so Levy has also studied the musicians where the lyre-playing tradition still lives in North Africa and elsewhere.His reconstructions of ancient music undoubtedly involve some speculation. But he has approached ancient lyres with the sensibility of a musican, and the results are fascinating and haunting.The lyre produces two distinctive sounds, a harp-like tone produced by plucking with the fingers of the left hand, and a more biting tone produced by picking the strings with the right hand. This is fun to watch. The subject of tuning the lyre is endless, but I’ll not go into it here, except to note that Levy began tuning the lyre using standard Western scales, but eventually began to explore “just” intonation, in which the frequencies of the strings are related by integer ratios. I’ll probably have a lot more to say about that at a later time, but you can listen here to try to discern the difference in sound from modern music.Levy has hundreds of videos on youtube, and a ton of albums on iTunes that you can sample. I’ve listened to a lot of these, and I find them by turns relaxing and strangely haunting. There’s a ton of additional background information on his website as well. I’ll leave the exploring to you, but by all means check it out.I originally learned of Levy when I became curious about what the oldest known written music might be. It happens to be “Hurrian Hymn no.6″, which was written on a clay tablet 3400 years ago. The tablet was discovered in the 1950′s in Syria, and eventually decoded in the seventies. Levy had the good fortune to be chosen to record the melody. In his own words:In my arrangement of the Hurrian Hymn, I have attempted to illustrate an interesting diversity of ancient lyre playing techniques, ranging from the use of “block and strum” improvisation at the end, glissando’s, trills & tremolos, and alternating between harp-like tones in the left hand produced by finger-plucked strings, and guitar-like tones in the right hand, produced by use of the plectrum.You can hear this haunting echo of an inconceivably old civilization here. Thanks to Michael Levy, the “musical shaman,” for this fascinating work.” - Mike Mackey

“The Epic Poetry of the Lyre...From the lullaby-esque pluckings of “Awe of the Aten” to the pulsing intensity of “The Battle of Thermoplyae,” Musical Adventures in Time Travel… moves its listeners from the biblical to the lyrical via the beautiful vibrations of the one of music’s most ancient instruments, the lyre. In his Michael Levy’s hands, this instrument becomes at times soft and playful, at others robust and powerful, but always arresting. Here the narrative strings speak as would a poet were playing them, and in fact even in place of the poet. Michael Levy is the lyre’s contemporary virtuoso, a poet of the past whose words are the struck and plucked notes of his lyre. I would recommend this album to anyone who wants to hear the visceral beauty of sound stripped down to strings, music laid bare, beautiful. ” - tdolanguage