Gardzienice, Osrodek praktyk teatralnych - "Orkiestra Antyczna" (2003) **RE-UPLOADED**

This CD record accompanied the Polish edition of the book Music in Ancient Greece and Rome by John Landels. The book (and so the CD) is currently out-of-print.

Maybe not as hypnotic, not as mesmerising as the first album, Metamorfozy, but still exceptional piece of music, both as something simply enjoyable or something to listen to and as a set of highly elaborated compositions. Work of Gardzienice is one of the most convincing reconstructions of ancient mousikē - they do their best to squeeze out as much as possible from incomplete data and to reconstruct irreconstructible.

junusynu @ rateyourmusic.com

*****

The music itself is 4-stars, but the priceless scientific book on the subject that accompanies it is worth additional half star. This is by far the most convincing and probably accurate reconstructions of Ancient music I've ever heard. Recommended for everyone interested in ancient mysteries and theater, not recommended for those imagining Ancient Greeks as some clean-singing noble elves.

hattivat @ rateyourmusic.com

*****

Osrodek praktyk teatralnych "Gardzienice" (Centre for Theatre Practices "Gardzienice") was founded in 1977 by Włodzimierz Staniewski, and formally registered in 1978. The name comes from the village where the theatre is located. The group gained international critical acclaim, and is classified as an experimental anthropological theater. In 1997 the association established the Academy for Theatre Practices. This carries out numerous projects: research, arts, music, and cultural investigation into the humanities.

Orkiestra antyczna (The Ancient Orchestra) was a scientific project directed by Tomasz Rodowicz and Maciej Rychły, focused on reconstruction of music of ancient Greece and Rome, conducted in cooperation with musicologists. The reconstructed music was then played and recorded by the theatre's musical ensemble. This CD record accompanied the Polish edition of the book Music in Ancient Greece and Rome by John Landels. The book (and so the CD) is currently out-of-print.

Projects like this one are highly controversial among the scholars, as well as "classical" music critics and fans, because the sources from which we can learn about works, practices and instruments of ancient music are not even scarce - they are almost non-existent. And I mean it - just to give you some perspective, we are talking here about building instruments, which nobody have touched for 2 thousand years, on the basis of pictures found on ancient ceramic vessels. Or "reconstructing" songs upon seven and a half words and not many more musical notes found on a broken stone slab (like it is with the track no. 13: "Hode Galatan Ares"). The painful truth is that nobody knows how these notes have been sung and how this music sounded. Therefore, maybe it would be more proper to call such efforts "artistic interpretation" rather than "scientific reconstruction".

Some may say I'm a little bit too harsh, not respecting hard work of these researchers. That is not true. I have great esteem for them. But let's be reasonable. Just imagine that in two thousand years some future civilization will play Beethoven's For Elise on a "piano" built from this illustration, after "reconstructing" the piece on the basis of a few random bars coming from the burnt score and a review from a magazine. It may be a great work, but do you think it will sound anything like the composition that I linked above? No way.

So is this album a disappointment? Not at all! All I say is - let's not treat it like a definitive recording of ancient music, but rather as a suggestion: it might have sounded like that.

So how is it, when judged on its own merits? Brilliant. Astounding. Breathtaking. Mesmerizing. I have to stop right now, because I'm running out of adjectives. You're lucky you're reading me in English, because in Polish I'd go on like this for several more pages. Each of these songs is so powerful, hypnotic, full of emotions that you are immediately carried away by the procession of ancient Greeks. You can only hope you won't end up offered as a sacrifice to Greek gods.

So all this long introduction was to prepare you for what I am about to write now: I don't give a fuck if this is true ancient music or just a new-age'y / folky imitation. This is a masterpiece of Music. Who cares for labels. Let's just listen to this awesome record and praise ingenious people that created it.

I have to end with a small disclaimer. Due to high originality and uniqueness of this music, this record is of course not for everyone. For the majority of pop/rock oriented public it would be probably just a cacophony. But if only you have open mind (and ears) for sonic experiments and you are not afraid of new musical experiences and unusual sounds, I am sure you will be delighted.

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Listen to the full album on YouTube.







Not My Rip. Many thanks to the original releaser.

Disclaimer: As you can see in the EAC log, the person that ripped this CD used a wrong offset setting: "Combined read/write offset correction" is set to "0", what probably means there are some missing samples (but note that it does not mean these differences are audible - it just means the copy is not formally "exact"). I carefully listened to this rip and I heard no audible ripping errors. Further, bear in mind that this CD is no longer available.

The read mode line should usually say "disable cache", but it may say "NO disable cache" for drives that do not cache data.

Tracklisting:
01. Promoleth' Helikona [02:44]
02. All' o chryseokitharin [03:14]
03. Tripoda manteion [04:02]
04. All' o Phoibe [05:12]
05. En, klyta megalopolis Atthis [02:22]
06. Ganytai [02:54]
07. Alla Latous [01:50]
08. Paian, o Paian [02:49]
09. Kronos archon [03:18]
10. Melipnoon [02:56]
11. Chelidon [02:46]
12. En kymasin [04:01]
13. Hode Galatan Ares [03:17]

Playing Time………: 41:30

Personnel:
Agnieszka Błońska, Ania Dąbrowska, Dagmara Nakonieczna, Maciej Maciaszek, Anna Helena MacLean, Paulina Matuszewska, Matylda Obryk, Beata Oleszek, Sean Palmer, Paweł Passini, Grzegorz Pawłowski, Tomasz Rodowicz, Marcin Roszkowski, Maciej Rychły, Elina Toneva, Łukasz Walewski. Guest: Jahiar

Instruments:
phorminx, aulos, portative organ/hydraulis, tympanum: Maciej Rychły
buccinas: Sean Palmer, Łukasz Walewski, Maciej Maciaszek
drums: Paweł Passini, Łukasz Walewski
lyre: Paweł Passini


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