Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
My complementary recording project to the release of my album, "Magic of the Kithara" in 2025, was re-editing, re-mastering & re-releasing my 2022 album, "Ancient Greek Magic" under the new, more appropriate descriptive title, "Enchantment of the Tortoise Lyre", featuring my recreated ancient Greek tortoise shell lyre (custom made for me by Luthieros: https://luthieros.com), this time evoking the space of some ancient Greek Temple with eerie reverb sampled from York Minster Cathedral & new cinematic-style mastering.
Available from all the usual digital music platforms from 1st June 2025, the album can be pre-saved from Spotify now:
open.spotify.com/prerelease/5k5aYzgTCYa7tx68c8L0OH
Studio quality audio (available in 24-bit/96kHz resolution!), complete with a PDF booklet of the detailed album notes, will be available on 1st June, from Bandcamp:
michaellevy.bandcamp.com
The lyre featured in this performance has a resonator fashioned from a foraged Greek land tortoise, with goat skin soundboard - custom made in modern Greece, by Luthieros:
luthieros.com
About the closest thing to taking the 2,400 year old Elgin Lyre out of its display cabinet at the British Museum & actually performing on it!
This presentation features track 3, "The Sorcery of Circe". In Greek mythology, Circe was the ancient Greek goddess of sorcery who was skilled in the magic of transmutation, illusion, and necromancy - the supposed practice of communicating with the dead, especially in order to predict the future!
She lived on the mythical island of Aiaia (Aeaea) with her nymph companions. When Odysseus came to her island, she transformed his men into beasts but, with the help of the god Hermes, he overcame her and forced her to end the spell.
In attempting to evoke through music, the sinister, magical powers of Circe, I feature in the piece, my own personalised chromatic variation of the ancient Greek Dorian mode.
The original ancient Greek Dorian Mode had the equivalent intervals as EFGABCDE (this mode was confusingly misnamed the ‘Phrygian’ mode by scholars during the Middle Ages). I chromatically adjust the mode to EFG#ABCD#E, whose resulting mystical quality, is further enhanced by the distinctively intense, focused intervals of just intonation.
This piece attempts to evoke a feeling of sinister sorcery by the formless improvisatory nature of the track, which features again, my own chromatic variation of the ancient Greek Dorian Mode; as also featured in track 8, "The Hex of Hecate" and track 10, "Charon the Ferryman". I also experiment by using the side of my plactrum of carved goats horn to percussively hit the strings instead of plucking them in a particularly eerie section of the piece (from 1:49 into the track!).
Although my tortoise lyre only has 9 strings, throughought the piece, I demonstrate how the range of pitches can be extended over 2 octaves, through the use of harmonics, which in turn, augments the desired overall eerie quality of the timbre of the piece.
For full details of my many 'musical adventures in time travel', please check out all my official artist links below - many thanks for watching!
Subscribe:
youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=Klezfiddle1
Official Artist Links:
Official Website:
ancientlyre.com
Digital Music Artist Profiles:
Spotify: open.spotify.com/artist/7Dx2vFEg8DmOJ5YCRm4A5v
iTunes & Apple Music:
itunes.apple.com/us/artist/michael-levy/id4324920
Amazon:
amzn.to/2zmJph3
Bandcamp:
michaellevy.bandcamp.com
Facebook Page:
facebook.com/beautifullyre
Twitter:
twitter.com/AncientLyre
Instagram:
instagram.com/mlevy1400bce
Patreon:
patreon.com/Michael_Levy_Ancient_Lyre_Music
My complementary recording project to the release of my album, "Magic of the Kithara" in 2025, was re-editing, re-mastering & re-releasing my 2022 album, "Ancient Greek Magic" under the new, more appropriate descriptive title, "Enchantment of the Tortoise Lyre", featuring my recreated ancient Greek tortoise shell lyre (custom made for me by Luthieros: https://luthieros.com), this time evoking the space of some ancient Greek Temple with eerie reverb sampled from York Minster Cathedral & new cinematic-style mastering.
Available from all the usual digital music platforms from 1st June 2025, the album can be pre-saved from Spotify now:
open.spotify.com/prerelease/5k5aYzgTCYa7tx68c8L0OH
Studio quality audio (available in 24-bit/96kHz resolution!), complete with a PDF booklet of the detailed album notes, will be available on 1st June, from Bandcamp:
michaellevy.bandcamp.com
The lyre featured in this performance has a resonator fashioned from a foraged Greek land tortoise, with goat skin soundboard - custom made in modern Greece, by Luthieros:
luthieros.com
About the closest thing to taking the 2,400 year old Elgin Lyre out of its display cabinet at the British Museum & actually performing on it!
This presentation features track 3, "The Sorcery of Circe". In Greek mythology, Circe was the ancient Greek goddess of sorcery who was skilled in the magic of transmutation, illusion, and necromancy - the supposed practice of communicating with the dead, especially in order to predict the future!
She lived on the mythical island of Aiaia (Aeaea) with her nymph companions. When Odysseus came to her island, she transformed his men into beasts but, with the help of the god Hermes, he overcame her and forced her to end the spell.
In attempting to evoke through music, the sinister, magical powers of Circe, I feature in the piece, my own personalised chromatic variation of the ancient Greek Dorian mode.
The original ancient Greek Dorian Mode had the equivalent intervals as EFGABCDE (this mode was confusingly misnamed the ‘Phrygian’ mode by scholars during the Middle Ages). I chromatically adjust the mode to EFG#ABCD#E, whose resulting mystical quality, is further enhanced by the distinctively intense, focused intervals of just intonation.
This piece attempts to evoke a feeling of sinister sorcery by the formless improvisatory nature of the track, which features again, my own chromatic variation of the ancient Greek Dorian Mode; as also featured in track 8, "The Hex of Hecate" and track 10, "Charon the Ferryman". I also experiment by using the side of my plactrum of carved goats horn to percussively hit the strings instead of plucking them in a particularly eerie section of the piece (from 1:49 into the track!).
Although my tortoise lyre only has 9 strings, throughought the piece, I demonstrate how the range of pitches can be extended over 2 octaves, through the use of harmonics, which in turn, augments the desired overall eerie quality of the timbre of the piece.
For full details of my many 'musical adventures in time travel', please check out all my official artist links below - many thanks for watching!
Subscribe:
youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=Klezfiddle1
Official Artist Links:
Official Website:
ancientlyre.com
Digital Music Artist Profiles:
Spotify: open.spotify.com/artist/7Dx2vFEg8DmOJ5YCRm4A5v
iTunes & Apple Music:
itunes.apple.com/us/artist/michael-levy/id4324920
Amazon:
amzn.to/2zmJph3
Bandcamp:
michaellevy.bandcamp.com
Facebook Page:
facebook.com/beautifullyre
Twitter:
twitter.com/AncientLyre
Instagram:
instagram.com/mlevy1400bce
Patreon:
patreon.com/Michael_Levy_Ancient_Lyre_Music
