Thermopylae 480 BC - Epic Symphony

Music & vocals by Farya Faraji. Please note that this isn’t reconstructed historical music, it’s modern music that uses aspects of Ancient Greek music and modern Iranian music. Notes on some of the chapters: “The Spartans - Leonidas” uses the Enharmonic modes of Ancient Greek music, which was defined by usage of microtonal intervals. The orchestration and arrangement heard here is largely historically compatible, and may give an accurate enough insight into the sounds of Ancient Greek music. The instruments heard for the Greeks are a frame drum, Ancient Greek lyres, and a basic rural flute; as well as the aulos and bagpipes. Modern Greek instruments like the bouzouki also join in later in the symphony. The flute melody is in the first tetrachord of the Lydian Chromatic mode, another of the three variants of Ancient Greek modality: Enharmonic, Chromatic and Diatonic. The Iranian themes utilise the vast modal repertoire of Iranian music, called the dastgāh system today, which is related to the broader maqam system also used in modern Greece. The Achaemenids’ leitmotif and Xerxes’ leitmotifs are based on medieval variants of the Segāh mode that I found in the works of Safi-ad-Din and early Safavid-era music theorists. The Iranian instrumentation consists of a modern orchestra played in a typical Middle-Eastern fashion, a tar, setar, tanbour, qanun, oud, ney flute, santour, and daf and tombak drums. The lyrics to the chapter “the Empire” are Achaemenid-era writings written...