ILS Newsletter – July 2026 | Issue 05

From Thrace to Delphi: The Living Tradition of the Ancient Lyre

Promnesia by Giorgos Tabakis

Anecdote of the Month

Anecdote of the month

Once, the great Maestro Andreas Paridis was rehearsing with a singer whose intonation left much to be desired. The rehearsal went on, and the maestro sighed and puffed in growing frustration. At one point, he could no longer contain himself and said:

“I look for you on the white keys, and I can’t find you. I look for you on the black keys, and I can’t find you there either. Where on earth are you singing – in the cracks between them?”

The Musician’s Journey

Imagine that you are at home. It is a beautiful house—familiar, comforting, and safe. You know every corner of it. You know where you belong.

This is the tonic.
In the Dorian harmonia, your home is A minor.

At some point, however, you open the door and step outside. There is no reason to remain inside forever. The world is vast, and it invites you to discover it.

So you arrive at D minor.

You are not lost. You are simply farther away from your center. You encounter new landscapes, hear new sounds, and begin to discover things you never knew before.

As you continue, the journey becomes ever more fascinating, yet also more demanding. The roads grow more difficult, and you begin to wonder which direction to take.

Then you arrive at G major.

Here lies the tension of the story. It is not a bad place. It is the point at which the adventure reaches its climax. It is the moment when you realize that in order to find yourself, you must first seek yourself.

G whispers to you:

“You have travelled well. But where do you truly belong?”
And then you remember the path home.

You return to A minor.
Your home is exactly where you left it. Yet it is no longer the same. The walls are the same. The door is the same. The room is the same.

But you have changed.

Now you know the world beyond your home. You know distance, uncertainty, adventure, and return. That is why the final A minor always sounds more beautiful than the first- not because the chord itself has changed, but because you have changed.

Perhaps herein lies a small secret – not only of music, but of life itself.
Many people seek peace by remaining still. Yet true peace is not born of immobility. It is born of the journey.

The bird returns to its nest.
The river returns to the sea.
The human being returns to oneself.

But neither the bird, nor the river, nor the human being is exactly the same as before.

Wisdom does not lie in never leaving one’s home. It lies in departing, discovering the world, and one day being able to return carrying within oneself all that has been learned.

So it is in music.

The tonic is home.
The subdominant is the road.
The dominant is the great trial.

And the return to the tonic is the moment when one understands that home had always been there. Only now is it seen with different eyes.

Perhaps this is why the ancient sages expressed different ideas that ultimately spoke of the same mystery.

Heraclitus reminds us that everything flows and everything moves.

Hegel teaches us that progress is born through opposition and contradiction.

Parmenides tells us that beneath all change there exists a deeper unity.

And music seems to vindicate them all.

For every beautiful melody begins at a point, moves away, wanders, encounters difficulties, and eventually returns to where it began.

Then we understand that the journey and the destination were never two separate things.

They were one.

The Lydian Harmonia: A Historical Approach to Its Ethos

The Lydian harmonia constitutes one of the most intriguing and enduring concepts in the history of Western musical thought. From Ancient Greece to the Renaissance, its name survives, yet its ethos and musical function undergo significant transformations in accordance with the aesthetic values of each period. Tracing this evolution reveals not merely the history of a musical mode, but also the history of musical expression itself.

The earliest references associate the Lydian with Lydia and, more broadly, with the cultural sphere of Asia Minor. For the Greeks, these musical traditions represented a world of refinement, emotional sensitivity, and artistic sophistication. Although precise descriptions of their musical form have not survived, the Lydian appears to have been associated, already in the Archaic period, with an ethos distinct from the austerity traditionally attributed to the Dorian.

In the Classical period, we encounter the first explicit philosophical evaluation of the Lydian harmonia. In the Republic(398e–399a), Plato refers to the chalara lydisti and syntonolydisti harmonies, which he considers unsuitable for the education of the citizens of his ideal state. He associates them with lamentation, mourning, softness, and emotional relaxation. Within the Platonic system of values, the Lydian does not embody the courageous and self-disciplined ethos that he wishes to cultivate among the guardians of the city.

To the modern listener, the notion that a major scale may convey a mournful character can appear paradoxical. Yet Handel’s aria Lascia ch’io pianga offers a compelling example. It is perhaps one of the most tragic pieces ever composed, and yet it is written in F major.

Aristotle, by contrast, presents an entirely different perspective in the Politics (1342b). He characterizes the Lydian as malista tōn harmoniōn paideutikē—“the most educational of the harmonies.” He attributes to it qualities of gentleness, balance, and decorum. This shift is remarkable: within the span of only a few decades, the same harmonia is portrayed at one moment as mournful and effeminate, and at another as mild and pedagogically beneficial. Such divergence suggests that musical ethos was not regarded as an objective property inherent in a scale, but rather as a product of musical practice and aesthetic perception.

With Aristoxenus, the discussion moves away from ethical evaluation toward musical analysis. Attention is redirected to the relationships between pitches, genera, and the structural organization of the harmoniai. The Lydian thus ceases to be primarily a philosophical subject and becomes integrated into a systematic theoretical framework.

The historical continuity of the Lydian becomes particularly fascinating when examined through the lens of performance practice. As transmitted by ancient authors, the Lydian harmonia corresponds to the arrangement extending from C to C. On the seven-stringed lyre, however, the central string (mese) occupies the position of F. The mese is not simply another pitch within the system; it constitutes the axis around which musical thought is organized and serves as the principal point of reference in performance.

From this perspective, the Lydian harmonia is not experienced merely as a scale spanning C to C, but rather as a musical space whose center of gravity lies on F. This observation acquires particular significance when compared with the medieval Lydian mode.

During the Middle Ages, the Lydian mode is defined by F as its finalis and develops around this pitch. A characteristic feature of the mode is the presence of the F–B interval, which generates the tension of the tritone. Medieval practice frequently mitigated this tension through the use of B-flat (B molle), without, however, fundamentally altering the modal identity of the Lydian.

The same situation persists during the Renaissance. The Lydian remains theoretically present, while performance practice adapts its intervals according to the aesthetic demands of the period. This serves as a reminder that the ethos of a mode is determined not solely by its theoretical description, but also by the manner in which it lives within musical practice.

The journey of the Lydian harmonia from Antiquity to the Renaissance demonstrates that musical modes are not static theoretical constructs. Rather, they are continuously transformed through performance, aesthetic experience, and cultural use. In the case of the Lydian, reconsidering the role of the mese on the seven-stringed lyre offers a fresh perspective for understanding ancient musical ethos and allows us to formulate a productive hypothesis: that the affinity between the ancient Lydian harmonia and the medieval Lydian mode stems not only from their intervallic structure, but more fundamentally from the function of a shared musical center – F.

Viewed from this perspective, the revival of the ancient lyre constitutes more than an attempt to reconstruct an instrument or a repertoire. It also represents a laboratory for reapproaching the very musical ethos described by ancient sources.

If you have not yet begun your journey with the lyre, we invite you to enroll in our free introductory course and become part of the growing International Lyre Society community.

The first step is open to all – the path continues as far as you wish to go.

Editorial Credits

Articles: Dr. Nikos Xanthoulis
Copy Editing:
Dr. Evangelia Kopsalidou
Paul Amiel Stewart (English Version)
Editorial Coordination & Visual Curation:
Ilias Zervas

Published by the International Lyre Society