Category
page 1Ancient Greek composers

Mesomedes
Mesomedes of Crete () was a Greek citharode and lyric poet and composer of the early 2nd century AD in Roman Greece. Prior to the discovery of the Seikilos epitaph in the late 19th century, the hymns of Mesomedes were the only surviving written music from the ancient world. Three were published by Vincenzo Galilei in his Dialogo della musica antica e della moderna (Florence, 1581), during a period of intense investigation into music of the ancient Greeks. These hymns had been preserved through the Byzantine tradition (Anthol. pal. xiv. 63, xvi. 323), and were presented to Vincenzo by Girolamo
Athenaeus
ancient Greek composer
Limenius
Limenius (; ) was an Athenian composer of paeans and prosodia. As creator of the Second Delphic Hymn in 128 BC, he is the earliest known composer in recorded history for a surviving piece of music, or one of the two earliest, or the second-earliest, depending first on whether one accepts the proposition of Bélis, that the composer of the First Delphic Hymn is named Athenaeus and, second, whether that hymn was composed in the same year as the Second Hymn, or ten years earlier. Limenius was a performer on the kithara and, as a professional musician performing in the Pythaïs (the liturgical embas
Charixene
Charixene, or Charixena (5th-century BC), was an Ancient Greek musician, poet and composer. She was a professional fluteplayer. She was active as a poet and achieved some fame, and Eustathios lists her among Sappho and Korinna as a woman poet worthy of praise. She also wrote erotic songs, and composed tunes for wind instruments. She was respected as an artist, but as a person, many comic poets of the time referred to her as stupid and naive, and her name became an expression of stupidity.