Audio Recordings of the Orphic Hymn to Kronos/Saturn

in English and Ancient Greek!

As always…some audios to accompany the new translations of the Hymn.

My usual audio explanation/caveat about the pronunciation of ancient Greek can be found below the recordings.

For those of you who are new here, you might want to poke around my substack to find similar audio recordings of other hymns, as well as audio versions of all my major essays/posts. (I have loved ones with learning differences that affect their ability to read, so I try to make these teachings accessible to those who learn better by listening.)

Happy Hymn-making!

—Kristin

Hymn to Kronos (Ancient Greek version)

Hymn to Kronos (English Version)

A note on the ancient Greek pronunciation.

To the best of our knowledge, Greek was a TONAL language, meaning that (like Mandarin or Vietnamese) the musical quality of how the syllable was spoken could change its meaning. (For example, certain syllables may have had a “rising” quality; others a “downwards” tone, etc.) This tonality of the language gave it a special relationship to singing that our modern recitations of the Hymns can’t really capture. There ARE scholars out there working on reconstructing what ancient Greek poetry sounded like. Among my favorites is Armand D’Angour, Professor of Classics at Oxford’s College of Jesus. You can find an example of his work here.

My own Ancient Greek recitation here follows standard pronunciations used by Classicists. That is, I read it as prose rather than singing it. And I use a metered accent (imagine a drum: bum- BUM-bum-bum-BUM-bum-bum) rather than a tonal one. This, I feel, is a legitimate adaptation for us moderns—especially because, as with almost all other ancient poetry, we have no musical annotation for the Hymns. That said, I find that when read according to the standard Classicist method of pronunciation, we can still hear the alliteration, the onomatopoeia, and other aspects of the verses that made them so resonant in the original.

Perhaps some of you will feel inspired to put these to music, and if you do, I’d love to hear the results.

p.s. It should go without saying that these are for your personal use only, and shouldn’t be shared with anyone who isn’t a paid subscriber to my substack. But please do use them and let me know in the comments how they “work” for you!