Trapezuntine - Epic Byzantine Music

You can buy this song and the rest of my music here: https://faryafaraji.bandcamp.com/album/echoes-of-byzantium-vol-ii
Music by Farya Faraji, featuring musical samples by Greek musicians specialising in historical Greek music reconstruction. Please note that this isn't actual Byzantine music from the Byzantine era, and it has no reconstructive or historical pretenses--it's modern Greek music transposed onto an "epic music" sensibility. The image is from a copy of a destroyed fresco depicting Alexios III, his mother Eirene and his wife Theodora, from the Panagia Theoskepastos Monastery.

The Trapezuntine Empire, also called the Empire of Trebizond, was a rump state of the Byzantine Empire that emerged in the 13th century after the temporary fall of Byzantium to the hands of the Latin crusaders. It was established in Northeastern Anatolia, centering around the historical region of Pontus, around the city of Trebizond, today called Trabzon in Turkey; a city which is still a center of the Pontic Greek community.

The theme being that of the Trapezuntine Empire, I tried to emulate as best I could the essence of Pontic Greek music. Most my other Byzantine epic tracks tend to channel the sound of mainland Greece proper, but with this one, I wanted something that paid homage to the music of the Pontic Greeks. The Black Sea Kemenche called Ποντιακή λύρα (Pontiakí lýra), and the Classical Kemenche, πολίτικη λύρα (Constantinopolitan lyre) are the main instruments carrying the song. The Kemenche/Lyra is possibly the most emblematic instrument of the Byzantine Empire, as they both descend from the Byzantine Lyra which was widely used in the Empire. Pontic Greeks use particular rhythmic styles of playing the Black Sea Kemenche and dance along to it with a special style of dancing centered around rapid foot movements, of which you can see a good example in the 2004 Olympic Games closing ceremony in Greece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJbzez0uJIM

The Davul is the most widely used percussive instrument in Pontic Greek music, which I've used here, and the archetypal sound of Pontic Greek music partly derives from the admixture of the Black Sea Kemenche used with a Davul. An Oud provides the underlying bass line--whilst the Oud was most certainly used in the Byzantine Empire and is widely used in Greek music today, bass lines are a Western European idea and don't reflect the historical or traditional reality of Greek music, at least that of the Eastern coast of Greece and that of Pontic Greek music; I still used it so the song would have a "fuller" sound and scope, but consider that part creative liberty.

The song opens with a bagpipe, which accompanies the song throughout, and the bagpipe is also very much a staple of Pontic Greek music. However, as far as I'm aware, the bagpipe used by Pontic Greeks is the τσαμπούνα (Tsampouna), and I only have access to a Balkanic Gaida, but the sound of both is more or less similar, so I'll argue that it's a forgivable enough lack of accuracy.

With all that said, the choice of instruments and overall melody and playing style of this piece is more or less accurate to the music of the actual Byzantine Empire. The two Kemenche types used here existed in a common ancestral form-- the Byzantine Lyre, during the existence of the Empire; bagpipes were widely used by Byzantines, and percussions were too, so if you were to imagine the song without the underlying bass line, you would get a mildly, accurate enough approximation of the generality of Greek music of that era; it shouldn't be too far removed from the kind of music the actual Byzantines would have heard in certain situations.

If you're curious about Pontic Greek music, which is a fascinating subset of the incredibly diverse Greek music, I would recommend this excellent collection of songs found in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4GsEqM_sGg&t=3424s

Видео Trapezuntine - Epic Byzantine Music канала Farya Faraji