Mesomedes of Crete

A musician at the emperor's court

There is something almost miraculous about the story of Mesomedes of Crete: he is one of the very few composers of Antiquity from whom we have preserved not just the name, not just the texts, but the actual music. Notes. Melodies. Precise pitches. While the vast majority of ancient Greek music was lost forever, three hymns by Mesomedes survived with their notation intact. When a musician performs them today, they are playing something that first sounded nearly two thousand years ago. That is priceless.

Mesomedes lived in the 2nd century AD, during the reign of Emperor Hadrian (117–138 AD), one of the most refined and cosmopolitan periods of the Roman Empire. He was Cretan by origin, probably a freedman — a manumitted slave — and rose to become a chamber musician at the imperial court. Hadrian was a man of extraordinary culture: architect, poet, amateur philosopher, passionate lover of the Greek world. Artists and thinkers from across the Mediterranean flourished at his court, and Mesomedes was among the most valued.

We know the emperor paid him a generous salary — so generous that his successor Antoninus Pius cut it after his death, deeming it excessive. It is a minor detail, but revealing: Mesomedes was so highly regarded in life that his wages became a matter of state.

What he composed

From Mesomedes we have several poetic texts and, what is exceptional, three hymns with complete musical notation.

The Hymn to the Sun, the Hymn to Nemesis, and the Hymn to the Muse are pieces for solo voice accompanied by kithara or kítharis. Their style is refined, restrained, with an austere beauty that evokes meditation more than spectacle. There is none of the dramatic energy of Timotheus's Persians here: these are chamber pieces, intimate, perhaps intended for private devotion as much as public performance.

The notation that has come down to us uses the Greek alphabetic system: letters above the text indicating the pitch of each syllable. It is a different system from modern notation, but precise enough for musicologists to reconstruct the melodies with reasonable confidence. We do not know exactly how the rhythm sounded, or how the melody was ornamented in practice, but we have the melodic skeleton. And that skeleton is beautiful.

Survival: an accident of history

The hymns of Mesomedes were copied into medieval Byzantine manuscripts, probably because they continued to be used in some form of liturgical or educational practice. The Orthodox Church inherited part of the theoretical apparatus of ancient Greek music, and with it, some of its texts. Medieval scribes preserved what seemed useful or beautiful to them, not always knowing what they were keeping.

The Hymn to Nemesis, in particular, circulated widely. Nemesis was the goddess of retributive justice, the one who balances excess and hubris: a moral concept that resonated in the pagan world and, paradoxically, in the Christian one as well. That helped its survival.

The first recording of ancient music

In 1931, musicologist and performer Egon Wellesz recorded an interpretation of Mesomedes's Hymn to Nemesis. According to many scholars, it was the first time in history that a reconstruction of ancient music was recorded. That rudimentary recording marked the beginning of a tradition of research and performance that flourishes today in specialized ensembles around the world.

There is something moving about that chain: Mesomedes composes in the 2nd century, medieval scribes preserve his notation without fully understanding it, 19th-century philologists decipher it, 20th-century musicians perform it, 21st-century interpreters record it with reconstructed instruments. Music survives because in every generation there are people who decide it is worth preserving.

Why it matters for a guitarist

The guitar is, in its most direct lineage, heir to the plucked string instruments of the ancient Mediterranean. The Greek kithara, the Arab lute, the Spanish vihuela, the Baroque guitar: an unbroken chain of instruments sharing the same basic intuition — a resonating body, tensioned strings, fingers that pluck them.

Mesomedes did not write for guitar. But his hymns, when transcribed for plucked string instrument, sound with a surprising naturalness. The scale used in the Hymn to Nemesis, for example, is perfectly playable on a modern guitar without any adaptation. That is no coincidence: the instrument and the music come from the same sonic universe.

There is also a more abstract but no less important lesson. Mesomedes's hymns are modal music, built on a single scale that determines the entire character of the piece. There are no harmonic changes in the modern sense. No chord progressions. The expressiveness comes from melody, rhythm, and the relationship between voice and instrument. For a guitarist seeking to understand the roots of modal music — flamenco, blues, Miles Davis's modal jazz, Celtic music — Mesomedes is a revealing starting point.

Suggested listening and study

• Gregorio Paniagua & Atrium Musicae de Madrid — Musique de la Grèce Antique (Harmonia Mundi, 1979): includes performances of the Mesomedes hymns, an essential reference.
• Ensemble De Organographia — Music of the Ancient Greeks (Pandourion Records, 1997): rigorous reconstruction with recreated historical instruments.
• Christodoulos Halaris — has recorded extensively from ancient Greek music including Mesomedes, with more speculative but musically rich approaches.
• Search for the Hymn to Nemesis on YouTube: dozens of versions exist, from academic to experimental, allowing for comparison of interpretations.