# Did Roman Music Sound Like This (Miklos Rozsa)? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 7, 2013, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-roman-music-sound-like-this-miklos-rozsa/670616 "2013-10-07T20:02:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2013, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-roman-music-sound-like-this-miklos-rozsa/670616/1 "2013-10-07T20:02:28Z")
I was just listening to Rozsa’s stirring 'Parade of the Charioteers"from Ben Hur. It is a great piece of music-but is it something that a 1st century Roman would recognize? ---
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2013, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-roman-music-sound-like-this-miklos-rozsa/670616/2 "2013-10-07T20:21:57Z")
From [allmusic.com](http://allmusic.com): One of Miklos Rozsa’s most famous pieces from his most successful film score, for William Wyler’s Ben Hur (1959), Parade of the Charioteers is a fine example of the composer improvising authentic Roman-era music and also “stealing” from himself, all in epic style. An opening fanfare by the brass builds in intensity as the players sound ever shortening, quickening notes, accompanying the image of the charioteers assembling. The second half of the piece, done to a march tempo, starts out with an almost direct quote by Rozsa from his own Roman march music from the 1949 movie Quo Vadis (another feature film set in the early Christian era). Itself a bold, stirring piece of martial music, the Quo Vadis quotation resolves itself into a new, more brightly scored march, with the winds flaring over the radiant brass instruments as they play out their declamatory phrases with heavy support from the percussion section, all intended to evoke brutal, unbridled decadent (and superficial) glory of Rome and its rulers, and the men who serve them. Ben Hur and Quo Vadis were of a piece together musically–\*\*like every other composer ever asked to write a score for a movie with an ancient Roman setting, Rozsa was faced with the complete absence of even a scrap of authentic Roman music to work from. He had instruments to examine, but not a clue as to what kind of music was played on them. His desire for authenticity led him to Greek sources of the same period as a jumping off point. \*\*His specific inspiration for the Parade of the Charioteers came to him on the Sunday just before Christmas of 1958, standing on the Palantine Hill in Rome, where the Caesars’ palaces had been–he stood there trying to imagine the vistas they would have been, humming and whistling ideas, when the main body of the march coalesced in his thoughts. ETA: bolding mine. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2013, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-roman-music-sound-like-this-miklos-rozsa/670616/3 "2013-10-07T20:23:45Z")
As we have no written music or detailed descriptions of how people played instruments, we have no real idea how anything sounded prior to about the 13th century. Anybody’s guess as to what Viking, Roman or ancient Greek music sounded like is just guesswork. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2013, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-roman-music-sound-like-this-miklos-rozsa/670616/4 "2013-10-07T22:06:00Z")
Just how old do you think the people on this board are? ---
**Author:** ![Sr\_Siete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@Sr\_Siete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sr_Siete)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2013, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-roman-music-sound-like-this-miklos-rozsa/670616/5 "2013-10-08T01:06:48Z")
A bit of a problem is that the Roman Empire lasted centuries, and the expansion of the empire meant that new musical instruments and styles were added constantly. Even whether musical instruments were at all common or they preferred Greek theatre-style choruses for their musical needs is a mystery, ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2013, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-roman-music-sound-like-this-miklos-rozsa/670616/6 "2013-10-08T02:20:40Z")
I don’t think Miklos Rozsa had a time machine. Without knowledge of instruments, keys or scales, the music would have a strong beat and dramatically suggesting speed and conflict. But it would sound nothing like authentic Roman music. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2013, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-roman-music-sound-like-this-miklos-rozsa/670616/7 "2013-10-08T03:44:28Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > As we have no written music or detailed descriptions of how people played instruments, we have no real idea how anything sounded prior to about the 13th century. Anybody’s guess as to what Viking, Roman or ancient Greek music sounded like is just guesswork. [Ta](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurrian_songs)-[da](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikilos_epitaph). ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2013, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-roman-music-sound-like-this-miklos-rozsa/670616/8 "2013-10-08T19:14:36Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2013, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-roman-music-sound-like-this-miklos-rozsa/670616/9 "2013-10-09T19:31:22Z")
We have (surviving) Roman trumpets, horns, flutes-so we at least know what their instruments sounded like. Has any commentary on Roman music survived/ ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2013, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-roman-music-sound-like-this-miklos-rozsa/670616/10 "2013-10-09T20:11:34Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > We have (surviving) Roman trumpets, horns, flutes-so we at least know what their instruments sounded like. Has any commentary on Roman music survived/ Not sure about the material, but researchers have looked at fragments like items like the ones \*\*Ranchoth \*\*linked to so roman recreations based on research are possible, not 100% accurate for sure, but using the reconstructions of the instruments of the day and other evidence allows for performances that are likely to be close to the real thing: > **[Synaulia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaulia)** > > Synaulia is a team of musicians, archeologists, paleontologists and choreographers dedicated to the application of their historical research to ancient music and dance, in particular to the ancient Etruscan and Roman periods. > > The name comes from the Ancient Greek "συναυλία" (sunaulía), which in ancient Rome referred to a group of instruments consisting mainly of wind instruments. The group was founded and at first sponsored by the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden, Netherlands in 1995 by Itali... > [@](#): > > Synaulia is a team of musicians, archeologists, paleorganologists and choreographers dedicated to the application of their historical research to ancient music and dance, in particular to the ancient Etruscan and Roman periods.[1] > [@](#): > > The archeological-musical research work > > In the absence of a system of musical notation for the period in question, the reconstruction and study of ancient musical expression was based on comparative studies of iconography, textual analysis, social studies and customs, also drawing from paleorganology, ethnomusicology, archeology and historiography. > > The richness of the iconographic documentation, the abundance of tested theories and numerous literary connections facilitated the study and reproduction of a wide range of antique musical instruments, helping to determine, among other points of interest, their melodic and harmonic possibilities and acoustic quality. > > Armed with this historical information, the group’s research was then subdivided into several main research branches. The first branch was dedicated to wind instruments. The research led to the reconstruction of instruments such as syrinx, fistulae, tibiae, cornu, tuba, bucina, iynx, and rhombus. The second branch dealt with string instruments: among others the lyra, cithara, sambuca, cordae and pandura were reconstructed.[5] And here is a link to a recorded performance of the group/team: [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/IbobyIEt9Rc/hqdefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEmCOADEOgC8quKqQMa8AEB-AH-BIAC4AOKAgwIABABGH8gNSgiMA8=&rs=AOn4CLA-wC5ItfUq-uoqE87-5fAYUQoOdA "Ancient Roman Music - Synaulia XII") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbobyIEt9Rc)