Stock: 
Format: 
Release Date: 25-06-1998
Label: Celestial Harmonies
Catalog Number: 13174-2
Barcode: 13711317428
Musical Style: World
Track Listing:
| Disc 1 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Atum (Creator Sun God) [16:16] | 3 | Khet (The Physical Body) [15:23] |
| 2 | Maat (Truth Balance Order) [15:43] | 4 | Shen (Eternity) [14:35] |
Description:
The catalyst for Ankh: The Sound of Ancient Egypt was an exhibition - Life and Death in the Land of the Pharaohs, developed by the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, The Netherlands. The exhibition came to the Australian Museum in 1998. It provided the challenge of producing a creative reconstruction of ancient Egyptian music and the inspiration for a longer term research project. The first stage of the project began with a response to the contents of the exhibition itself, followed by a delving into the ever-increasing output of Egyptological scholarship, to establish a broader musical context. The big questions loomed large: what did the music sound like? How were the instruments tuned? Was the music polyphonic? One must proceed by conjecture and deduction, using the literary and visual record in conjunction with an examination of surving instruments. The answers remain elusive, mainly gleaned from instruments housed in museums, along with iconographic and literary evidence. There is no surviving music notation, nor any musical theory which might instruct one about pitch, rhythm and timbre. In approaching the composition and performance of the music, Michael Atherton drew on his experience in playing medieval monophony, eastern European and Turkish folk music, as well as his participation in intercultural music projects. Atherton primarily uses 5, 6 and 7 note scales based on specific pitches, resulting in a combination of Moroccan ramal mai mode and Persian afshari. He also gravitates toward pentatonic scales and major modes. The melodies move in small steps. The setting of the hymns is monophonic, with the inclusion of call and response development. Sung items include interpolated recitations, as a means of acknowledging a deep connection between lanuguage and music. Ankh: The Sound of Ancient Egypt is a contribution to giving a voice to the vivid images of a dynamic musical culture.
Biography:
Mult-instrumentalist Michael Atherton was born in the U.K. in 1950 and grew up in Australia. He composes in a variety of genres and styles including chamber music, screen, radio and theatre. He is founding Professor of Music and Head of Contemporary Arts at the University of Western Sydney, Nepean. Also active in the field of higher education is composer and shakuhachi Master (shihan), James Ashley Franklin, with whom Atherton collaborates on this recording. Since 1994, Franklin has been a lecturer and subsequently senior lecturer in Music Technology at the University of Western Sydney. James Ashley Franklin was born in Australia in 1959 and started playing piano at the age of nine. Later, he studied Western art music together with ethnomusicology at the University of Sydney and trained as a composer. He has developed a musical career bridging a wide range of styles, from classical Western music to electronic and to traditional and modern music for the shakuhachi winning numerous awards in Australia and overseas.
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