Notation-Based Ancient Greek Music Synthesis with ARION

NOTATION-BASED ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC SYNTHESIS WITH Dionysios Politis Konstantinos Vandikas Dimitrios Margounakis Computer Science Department Aristotle University of Thessaloniki GREECE Computer Science Department University of Crete GREECE Computer Science Department Aristotle University of Thessaloniki GREECE ABSTRACT This paper describes an instrument that can compose a song using predicates of Ancient Greek Music. It employs the methodology and musical notation of this specific music system and at the same time, it provides a mapping mechanism that depicts the whole process to composition predicates of the usual notation of Western Music. The aim of this application is to facilitate the efforts of Ancient Greek Music researchers in getting closer to what Ancient Greek Music really was by parametrically performing melodic pieces. and actual music scores and have given a scientific insight for a music system over 2000 years old. This project takes their work and tries to make a connection between that music and prevailing modern Western Music. A software instrument is produced, ARION, capable of reproducing whole songs both musically and vocally and the same time the user can experiment with the various scales, symbols and frequencies having the total freedom to “imagine” and hear how AGM music really was. The graphical user interface of ARION can be seen in Figure 1. ARION provides ethnomusicology with an experimental tool for notation-based Ancient Greek Music synthesis. The project approaches Ancient Greek Music by introducing a virtual Ancient Greek singer, who is able to sing in the Ancient Greek accent, while a musical instrument accompanies him. An easy-to-use and functional interface is provided for adding music and lyrics in a composition, using modern or Ancient Greek symbols of writing and music. Key-Words: - Ancient Greek Music, Music Composers, .NET Framework, Csound, Singing Synthesis. 1. INTRODUCTION “Ancient Greek culture was permeated with music. Probably no other people in history have made more frequent reference to music and musical activity in its literature and art. Yet the subject is practically ignored by nearly all who study that culture or teach about it. Sometimes its very existence seems to be barely acknowledged.” [15] It is true that we know very little about Ancient Greek Music (from this point and forth: AGM) primarily because we have no actual recordings or hearings and secondly because sources about Eastern Music, the successor of AGM, are scattered and not thoroughly indexed as is the case with its counterpart, Western Music. Furthermore, it is difficult for researchers with a profound musical education in Western Music and culture, well advanced in diatonicism and tempered scales to understand the chromatic [11][12] and enharmonic background of AGM [15]. On the other hand, researchers and pioneers like West [15] and Pöhlmann [13] have managed to collect and organize a very large amount of documents Figure 1. The Graphical User Interface of ARION. 2. MUSIC IN ANCIENT GREECE 2.1. An overview A first elementary clue, which is extracted from the research on AGM, is that the singer possessed the main role on a musical performance. A musical instrument accompanied the sung Greek poetry. Ancient Greek poetry and tragedy was inseparable from music [2]. The term ‘lyric’ stems from the word ‘lyre’. In ancient Greece, the roles of composers and performers intertwined with each other. The reason why not so many handwritten scores from this era exist today, is that performers used to improvise on the musical instrument, while the soloist was singing the melody, and not read notes from papers. In general, the performer followed the singer’s tempo and sound, but he also tried to achieve heterophony (by improvising). So, the performer was also the composer at the same time. The nature of Ancient Greek Music was purely melodic and rhythmic. Aristides Quintilianus states: “Music is the science of melody and all elements having to do with melody”[16]. This definition of music goes all the way with the monophonic and melodic structure of Ancient Greek Music. Numerous treatises on AGM theory in Greek, Latin and Arabic have survived which, mingled with the study of other material, became integrated into the cultures of all Western peoples, the heirs of Hellenic learning [18]. 2.2. Ancient Greek Musical Notation The Greeks had two systems of musical notation, which correspond note for note with each other: one for the vocal and one for the instrumental melody [15]. The instrumental system of notation is comprised of numerous distinct signs probably derived from an archaic alphabet, while the vocal system is based on the 24 letters of the Ionic alphabet. The whole system covers a little over three octaves. In particular, it contains notes between Eb-3 (155,6 Hz) and G-6 (1568,1 Hz). This range of notes has been implemented and appears on the default form of ARION. The symbols form groups of three. The first symbol (from the left) in each triad represents a ‘natural’ note on a diatonic scale. The symbol in the middle represents the sharpening of the ‘natural’ note, while the third symbol represents the flattening of the ‘natural’ note (Figure 2). 3. PROBLEM FORMULATION 3.1. The challenge The challenge of the project is to be consistent to the source material and create an AGM composer with scientific accuracy and the same time to produce a synthesizing instrument with an easy to use interface targeting non-computer science experts. How can you faithfully reproduce AGM when you had never heard something like it (except for the recording approaches of contemporary music bands from all over the world)? The only safe way is to follow the work of experts in the field and the actual musical scores. Also, the instruments used at the time were very different than modern or even medieval ones. Moreover, the true Ancient Greek accent is different from the Modern Greek one and from the one used by foreigners today (the so called Erasmian) [7], so extended research had to be carried out on the vocal reproduction of the lyrics. The synthesis of the singing voice is a research area that has evolved over the last 30 years [8]. The voice production in the ARION application takes into account many inferences of the research experience and uses real-time physical modeling voice reproduction techniques. A phoneme modeler is embedded in the application. The modeling of the phonemes of the ancient Greek accent has carefully accomplished with the assistance of related linguistic research. 3.2. Technical Aspects This project was built using Microsoft’s .NET Framework. This application implements extensive use of the GDI+ calls that affect the Graphical User Interface and provide us the ability to create our own controls or to extend pre-existing ones. The application also uses and XML table for storing the data of the Ancient Greek notes and their association to modern ones. The sound of the instruments that his project performs was made with the use of Csound. The original sound fonts used in ARION were taken from reconstructed AGM instruments. 3.3. Ancient Greek Music Sources Over 40 melodies, most of them fragmented, have survived as stone inscriptions or musical papyri (scraps of papyrus, the ancient equivalent of paper) containing musical notation. While it is certainly true that the hearings are lost recent research has satisfactorily deciphered AGM notation and rhythm. In fact, we know quite a lot: we know a great deal about the rhythms and the tempo of the music, since these are reflected in the metrical patterns of Greek verse [13]. Adequate knowledge has been gathered about the musical system, that is, how the scales were conceived and the like, since the works of several Greek musical theorists survive, like those of Aristoxenus1. Instead of using ratios, he divided the tetrachord into 30 parts, of which, in his diatonic syntonon, each tone has 12 parts, each semitone 6 [1]. There are several writers, like Otto Gombosi [9], that managed to interpret and recognize the microtonal nature of Ancient Greek Music theory and practice. We can infer much about the instruments, using as evidence surviving fragments of ancient instruments [10][14], depictions on vases and wall paintings, literary descriptions, and cross-cultural comparison. In this first version of ARION, the sound of the musical instrument, which accompanies the Ancient Greek Singer, is an approach of the sound of avlos (wind instrument). 1 Aristoxenus, of Tarentum (Magna Graecia, - 4th century BC), a peripatetic philosopher, and writer on music and rhythm. Figure 4. AGM surfaces: notes for vocal and instrumental melodic scripting along with the lyrics. Figure 2. Notes for vocal performance, chosen from a pool of symbols comprising the instrumental and vocal repertory. 3.4. Related Work Lots of research has been done in recent years on the field of text-to-speech synthesis. The digitized speaking voice and vocoders are a major aspect of this area. One step ahead, the research has performed an amazing evolution over the last decades on the synthesis of the singing voice. There are plenty of works worldwide on singing synthesis [3][4][5]. Two text-tospeech/singing projects on Greek Music are IGDIS [6] and AOIDOS [17]. 4. THE APPLICATION The application consists of three major surfaces: The Symbol Repertory surface, the Ancient Greek Music Surface and the Modern Greek Music Surface. The Symbol Repertory is the container of all AGM Symbols used by the application. Figure 3. Editing an AGM note – the dialog box. By right-clicking the Edit Ancient Note Dialog Box is invoked (Fig. 3). In that dialog box the user can modify the type of the note and the note’s frequency. The AGM Drawing Surface consists of three fields, Vocal Symbols, Instrumental Symbols and Lyrics. The user can either drag’n’drop a symbol from the Symbol Repertory to the corresponding field or one can use the Text Tool (which is located in the Toolbar) to change each field. The Modern Music Surface has two modes, the Vocal Mode and the Instrumental Mode (Fig. 4). The user can interact with only one mode at a time. By right-clicking on a note the Edit Modern Note Dialog Box is invoked where the user can modify the note’s duration and frequency shifting it from double flat to double sharp and in between. Many notes of AGM have difficulty in their correspondence with their Western music counterparts, especially in modes like Phrygian and Lydian. The instrument gives its users the flexibility to experiment by assigning different pitch levels, and therefore the fuzziness of scales can be resolved in a trial and error manner by hearing the note. The last function is used for creating an audio representation of the current music document. The user can configure the final audio output by choosing which musical elements should it contain: instrumental, vocal and lyrics. He can also define the tempo of the song (the default value is 60). By clicking on “Export”, a Microsoft Wave file is created in the current working directory and a message about successful creation appears on the screen. The audio file is produced by using Csound’s rendering processes.In order to create the musical sequence the program exports an intermediate file containing information useful for the module that translates this information to a C-sound file. The information follows a certain format: [i1, Note Duration, Velocity, Note Frequency, *] For example the first three commands for the sample file “To tragoudi tou Seikilou” (Song of Seikilos) are: R0 [i1,l0.5,v100,q392.1,*, i1,l1,v100,q587.4,*,, i1,l0.5,v100,q587.4,*…… 5. LYRICS AND THE POLYTONAL SYSTEM One unique characteristic of ARION is that the user can add the lyrics of his/her AGM composition on their original format, that is on the polytonal system of writing at the ancient Greek language. Of course, the tool gives the option to write immediately on Modern Greek language. The polytonal system (with accents and breathings) was invented by Aristophanes- the Byzantine - in about 200 B.C. The Help section of ARION contains explicit instructions on how to install a polytonal Ancient Greek font. Once installed the user can write on the Ancient Greek format of writing, using several key combinations for the polytonal symbols (e.g. “+” results to rough breathing and circumflex, while “/” results to smooth breathing and the acute accent). 6. CONCLUSIONS In recent years several efforts have been recorded in Greece and elsewhere in reconstructing AGM instruments, both physically and with physical modeling techniques [14]. The most notable was the reconstruction of the ancient hydraulis by the European Cultural Centre of Delphi in 1999. A wide range of other instruments has been also presented in exhibitions and live performances [10]. However, never before an electronic instrument has been presented that can be used as an editor, composer and synthesizer the same time. ARION is the first instrument of its kind. Its main advantage is that it provides researchers a user interface that alters scales, accents and pitch assignments helping them experiment with music forms and scales that have an inherent fuzziness. 7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The ARION project is supported by “SEEArchWeb: An Interactive Web-based Presentation of Southeastern European Archaeology” – a SOCRATES funded programme, code 110665-CP-1-2003-1-GR-MINERVAM. The Multimedia Lab of the Department of Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, is coordinating this EU project. Project URL: http://meteora.csd.auth.gr. 8. REFERENCES [1] Barbour, J.M. Tuning and Temperament: a Historical Survey. Da Capo Press, New York, 1972. [2] Borzacchini, L. and Minnuni, D. “A Mathematica notebook about ancient Greek music and mathematics”. University of Bari, 2001. [3] Carlson, C., Ternstrom, S. and Sundberg, J. “A new Digital System for Singing Synthesis allowing Expressive Control”, ICMC 91, International Computer Music Conference, Montreal, 1991. [4] Chowning, J. “Computer Synthesis of Singing Voice”. ICMC 81, International Computer Music Conference, La Trobe University, Melbourne, 1981. [5] Cook, P. “Spasm, a real-time Vocal Tract Physical Model Controller, and Singer the companion Software Synthesis System”, Computer Music Journal, 17(1), MIT, Boston, 1993. [6] Cook, P. R., Kamarotos, D., Diamantopoulos, T., and Philippis, G. “IGDIS: A Modern Greek Text to Speech/Singing Program for the SPASM/Singer Instrument”, ICMC 93, International Computer Music Conference, Tokyo, September, 1993. [7] Devine, A.M., Stephens, L.D. The Prosody of Greek Speech. New York/Oxford, 1994. [8] Georgaki, A. “Virtual Voices on Hands: Prominent Applications on the Synthesis and Control of the Singing Voice”, SMC 2004, Sound and Music Computing 2004, Paris, France, 20-22 October, 2004. [9] Gombosi, O.J. “New Light on Ancient Greek Music”, International Congress of Musicology, New York 1939, New York, 1944, p. 168. [10] Halaris, C. Music of Ancient Greece, booklet and CD. Halaris has reconstructed Ancient Greek Music instruments. He has exhibited them and his ensemble performs with them. [11] Politis, D., Margounakis, D., Mokos K., “Vizualizing the Chromatic Index of Music”, WEDELMUSIC 2004, 4th International Conference on Web Delivering of Music, Barcelona, 13-15 September, 2004. [12] Politis, D., Margounakis, D., “Determining the Chromatic Index of Music”, WEDELMUSIC 2003, 3rd International Conference on Web Delivering of Music, Leeds, 15-17 September 2003. [13] Pöhlmann, E., West, M.L., Documents of Ancient Greek Music. Oxford, 2001. [14] Tsahalinas, K., et al, “Physical Modeling Simulation of the Ancient Grek Auloi”, ICMC 97, International Computer Music Conference, Thessaloniki, 1997. [15] West, M.L. Ancient Greek Music. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992. [16] Winnington-Ingram, R.P. "Aristoxenos and the intervals of Greek music", The Classical Quarterly vol. 26 no. 3-4, 1932, pp. 195-208. [17] Xydas, G. and Kouroupetroglou, G., “The DEMOSTHENES Speech Composer”, Proceedings of the 4th ISCA Tutorial and Research Workshop on Speech Synthesis, pp. 167-172, Perthshire, Scotland, August 29 – September 1, 2001. [18] Harmonia Mundi, Musique de la Grece Antique. Booklet and CD, HMA 1951015, France, 1979. Trademarks The .NET Framework is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.