Spring 2023 · Torch: U.S. · INTERVIEW WITH MARY ANN TEDSTONE GLOVER
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With Mary Ann Tedstone Glover
What was your inspiration for starting your PhD?
"Well, whenever you see a film set in the Roman period, the music's never right. It’s either a big orchestral score, or it sounds medieval, or there's something wrong with it. And that really inspired me to think what it would have sounded like...I realized there was no Roman music at all...So there was none that you could use for television programs. So there's just nothing authentic and realistic out there. So I decided to do a PhD in Ancient Roman music, and as part of that submission I had to do an album on Ancient Roman music."
The Music of Ancient Rome
In this interview, I had the pleasure of speaking with Mrs. Mary Ann Tedstone Glover, a composer and producer who has been pursuing a PhD in Ancient Roman Music, wherin she has created an album reconstructing the street music played by musicians in taverns, at dinners, and more. We discuss the inspiration, challenges, and process of this project, as well as the landscape of music and Rome and how it changed through the centuries. Some of the highlights of the discussion are on this spread, and there is an attatched transcript with the full conversation linked at the end.
when we played it the right way up like a cup, it didn't work very well in the studio. And we had to flip it the other way, and then I suddenly realized it was a bell...so that's the first time that instrument’s ever been played on an album, and the first time they’d been rattled since they were used."
What were the other clues that led you to constructing these instruments and putting the music together?
"So for every evidence I could find [about] a symposium, [I could] read the text and work out what was going on: what instruments were in the room and what they were doing. But you know that the thing that I've done...that was important was getting all the instrumentalists into a room and working out what can be done and what can't be done.
"So basically, we know that a lyre and an aulos played and flutes played and drums played and bells played, because we can see that all those on mosaics and vases, and they don't just come up once, they come up hundreds of times. And I think that's the most likely scenario.
What do you think were some of the biggest challenges you had in doing research for this?
"Oh, I didn't know what an aulos sounded like before I wrote for it. In my head, I thought it would sound like a crumhorn, like a medieval instrument, which is a lot quieter; it's kind of curved...I hadn't realized at that point that quite often when you see an aulos in a Roman painting or vase, there's a goose beside it; it’s rather loud and honking. So we got the aulos into a room with the other instruments like a very quiet delicate lyre, and a lute and things. And then the aulos started to play and I was like, “Oh, my goodness, that's like a bagpipe.”
"There are so few aulos players in the world because as I said, their discipline is so small now—and it's growing—that we had to work within the boundaries of what we had. And the aulos player also has problems with reeds...they're made of birch bark or a bamboo that can only be harvested one month of the year, so it becomes very complicated.
"The other thing that was challenging was I, in a search for a new and easily accessible street instrument...had made a rattle cup, which is a cup with beads at the bottom foot of the cup. And
Mosaic of street musicians from Pompeii depicting an aulos, cymbala, and tympanum.