Delphic Hymns

[1] If indeed it dates from ten years before the second, the First Delphic Hymn is the earliest unambiguous surviving example of notated music from anywhere in the Western world whose composer is known by name.

Both Delphic Hymns were addressed to Apollo, and were found inscribed on stone fragments from the south outer wall of the Athenian Treasury at Delphi in 1893 by French archaeologist Théophile Homolle, while Henri Weil restored the Greek text and Théodore Reinach transcribed the music to modern notation.

In this verse the singers call on the Muses (goddesses of music and dance) to leave their home on Mount Helicon and to join in the song in honour of Apollo.

This part has been translated by Armand d'Angour as follows:([9]) Hark, you whose domain is deep-forested Helicon, loud-thundering Zeus’ fair-armed daughters: come with songs to celebrate your brother Phoebus of the golden hair, who over the twin peaks of this mountain, Parnassus, accompanied by the far-famed Delphic maidens, comes to the streams of the flowing Castalian spring as he visits his mountain oracle.Ten different notes in all are used in this first verse.

The text reads:[13] Behold, Attica with its great city [Athens] is at prayer, dwellers on the unconquered land of the armed Tritonian goddess [Athena]; and on the holy altars Hephaistos [i.e. fire] consumes the thighs of bull-calves; and together with the smoke, Arabian incense rises to the heavens.

In this verse the singers address Apollo directly, and describe how he took over the prophetic tripod at Delphi after killing the snake that guarded it, and how once he thwarted an army of invading Gauls (see: Brennus (3rd century BC)).

[16] It consists of ten sections in all, the first nine in cretic metre constituting the paean, while the tenth in aeolic rhythms (glyconics and choriambic dimeters) is the prosodion.

Landels as follows:[18] Come ye to this twin-peaked slope of Parnassos with distant views, [where dancers are welcome], and [lead me in my songs], Pierian Goddesses who dwell on the snow-swept crags of Helikon.

Just as in the first hymn, the singers then address Apollo directly calling on him to come, and remind him how he killed the Python which formerly guarded the Delphic tripod and how he once defeated an army of marauding Gauls with a snowstorm (sections 6–9).

(The symbol ᴗ stands for a short syllable, — for a long one, equal in length to ᴗᴗ, and ×× for variable long-long, long-short, or short-long).

In this part, the singers beg Apollo and his sister Artemis ("mistress of Cretan bows") to protect Athens as well as Delphi, and they close with a prayer for the continued dominion of the victorious Roman empire.

[21] Mostly the melody moves up and down in small steps but there are some big jumps occasionally down to the bottom E. According to Pöhlmann and West,[17] the modes of the different sections as follows: The musical symbols used for the hymns can be interpreted thanks to a treatise by Alypius, a musicographer of late antiquity (3rd century AD).

It was normal to use both systems in the same piece of music, both written in separate lines above the lyrics; when both were used, the special symbols were for the instrumental accompaniment, and the plain Ionic alphabet for the vocal part.

Fragments of both hymns in the Delphi Archaeological Museum
First Delphic Hymn, 1st and 2nd verse
First stanza of the First Delphic Hymn. The pitch of the transcription is conventional; in performance the pitch would probably have been about a minor third lower. [ 8 ]
The pattern of the music in part A of the First Delphic Hymn, clearly showing the repeated use of the mesē or central note
The second verse of the First Delphic Hymn transcribed into modern musical notation. The fourth line, where the music wanders through the narrow range of notes of the pyknon, describes the melody of the aulos or pipe.
Photograph of the original stone at Delphi containing the first of the two hymns to Apollo. The music notation is the line of occasional symbols above the main, uninterrupted line of Greek lettering.
First Delphic Hymn, 3rd verse
Second Delphic Hymn
The first section of the Second Delphic Hymn (Limenios Paian) transcribed into modern notation (Places where the stone is broken have been indicated by rests in the music and empty brackets "[  ]" in the lyrics.)
Transcription into modern musical notation of the last section of the Second Delphic Hymn, showing its fragmentary condition. The prayer to "increase the empire of the Romans" is in the last line.