Ankh: The Sound of Ancient Egypt

Amazon.com
This album is based on a challenging idea: Try to recreate a musical form from a culture and period that left behind no recordings or musical notation, using only history, a description of the instruments, and some historical artifacts. It takes intuition as much as scholarship and craftsmanship to recreate the ancient instruments of Egypt--from simple percussion and flutes to boat-shaped and triangular harps and trumpets. Atherton, with his musicians and singers, exhibits both innovation and skill, offering not so much a look at how the music actually was, but more an intuitive guess at how it might have been, keeping the music first and history a close but well-heeled second. It can be frantic one moment and somber the next, as each of these lengthy song suites develops organically around a song or a piece of poetry--offering both early music and improvisational music aficionados something unique. Excellent recording quality is augmented by well-documented notes on history and instrumental research. --Louis Gibson

Tracks:

Atum (Creator Sun God) Song
Atum (Creator Sun God) Instrumental
Atum (Creator Sun God) Instrumental
Atum (Creator Sun God) Instrumental
Atum (Creator Sun God) Instrumental
Maat (Truth, Balance, Order) Song
Maat (Truth, Balance, Order) Instrumental
Maat (Truth, Balance, Order) Instrumental
Maat (Truth, Balance, Order) Instrumental
Maat (Truth, Balance, Order) Instrumental
Khet (The Physical Body) Song
Khet (The Physical Body) Instrumental
Khet (The Physical Body) Instrumental
Khet (The Physical Body) Instrumental
Shen (Eternity) Song
Shen (Eternity) Instrumental
Shen (Eternity) Song
Shen (Eternity) Instrumental

Amazon.com

This album is based on a challenging idea: Try to recreate a musical form from a culture and period that left behind no recordings or musical notation, using only history, a description of the instruments, and some historical artifacts. It takes intuition as much as scholarship and craftsmanship to recreate the ancient instruments of Egypt--from simple percussion and flutes to boat-shaped and triangular harps and trumpets. Atherton, with his musicians and singers, exhibits both innovation and skill, offering not so much a look at how the music actually was, but more an intuitive guess at how it might have been, keeping the music first and history a close but well-heeled second. It can be frantic one moment and somber the next, as each of these lengthy song suites develops organically around a song or a piece of poetry--offering both early music and improvisational music aficionados something unique. Excellent recording quality is augmented by well-documented notes on history and instrumental research. --Louis Gibson

Album Description

The catalyst for Ankh: The Sound of Ancient Egypt was an exhibition - Life and Death in the Land of the Pharaohs, developed by the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, The Netherlands. The exhibition came to the Australian Museum in 1998. It provided the challenge of producing a creative reconstruction of ancient Egyptian music and the inspiration for a longer term research project.

The first stage of the project began with a response to the contents of the exhibition itself, followed by a delving into the ever-increasing output of Egyptological scholarship, to establish a broader musical context. The big questions loomed large: what did the music sound like? How were the instruments tuned? Was the music polyphonic? One must proceed by conjecture and deduction, using the literary and visual record in conjunction with an examination of surviving instruments. The answers remain elusive, mainly gleaned from instruments housed in museums, along with iconographic and literary evidence. There is no surviving music notation, nor any musical theory which might instruct one about pitch, rhythm and timbre.

In approaching the composition and performance of the music, Michael Atherton drew on his experience in playing medieval monophony, eastern European and Turkish folk music, as well as his participation in intercultural music projects.

Atherton primarily uses 5, 6, and 7 note scales based on specific pitches, resulting in a combination of Moroccan ramal mai mode and Persian afshari. He also gravitates toward pentatonic scales and major modes. The melodies move in small steps. The setting of the hymns is monophonic, with the inclusion of call and response development. Sung items include interpolated recitations, as a means of acknowledging a deep connection between language and music.

Ankh: The Sound of Ancient Egypt is a contribution to giving a voice to the vivid images of a dynamic musical culture.

Customer Reviews:

Effective In Part -- Not Quite Enough Parts.......2001-07-16

Atherton starts with a splendid idea and certainly enough talent to carry his idea off. Despite some fine moments in a couple of the vocal selections, the rest is very forgettable. Having done his bit for research, Atherton seems to succumb to the temptation to ride the CD out using a lot of faux-Near Eastern musical riffs that simply get tedious. Adding to what others have already said, I also wonder if the ancient Egyptians had such a paltry knowledge of musical form. This recording might have worked as an evocation of dockside bar music, New Kingdom, but that's about it. The vocal areas, unlikely as they seem, get the CD three stars. For too-brief but still shining moments, Egypt is evoked pretty well. Pity the rest was so blah.

the sound of ancient egypt.......2001-04-13

as you can see i didn't like this cd. i am very interested in ancient egypt. i didn't like this cd because it was filled with mostly flutes and soft drums. there is hardly any singing and the singing sounds more like music from my church. and of the 18 tracks 13 of them are instrumental. i found this cd to be a waist of my money and i believe it will be for you as well.

Could Have Been Done Better.......2000-06-10

Michael Atherton's "Ankh" is a good showcasing of the instruments of the ancient world - however the vocals leave alot to be desired. Although he uses "ancient Egyptian" words in the spoken chants and singing in some of the songs, his choice of vocalists is incorrect for the subject matter. In short they sound far too "Western". The vocalists were far better suited to hymns with the Sunday Choir in a cathedral than in the columned halls of Ancient Egypt. Had Atherton used vocalists with a touch more passion and ethnicity, along the lines for example of Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance(Soundtrack for Gladiator) or Azam Ali ofthe group Vas, this album would have worked.

Not much melody........2000-06-07

It seems unthinkable that the ancient Egyptians had NO concept of using pleasurable patterns of sound to create melody. This CD, however, seems to argue that notion. Few patterns emerge... it seems more often that one completely random note is followed by another and another.

Definately a very different CD, notable perhaps for its novelty, but not much more.

Overall Very Excellent!.......2000-02-14

Michael Atherton did an excellent job re-creating the music of Ancient Egypt or what it might have sounded like in antiquity. A very relaxing CD oveerall.

The only shortcomming was the female vocals. The singers, though good, sounded far too much like the Nuns of St. Hildegard of Bingen rather than more middle eastern sounding vocals. Had Atherton used vocalists similar to Azam Ali of Vas, or even from India or Egypt then this CD would have been absolutely perfect.

Very well done otherwise.

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