Audio Versions of the Hymn to Pluto
Ancient Greek and English, plus some helpful Pluto/Hades resources
Each time I release a new translation of an Orphic Hymn, I record versions of it in Greek and English. I always give the same caveat about the pronunciation of ancient Greek, which you can scroll down to below.
What I love to listen for in the Greek (besides those words like “Demeter” or “Hades” or “Eleusis” that even English-speakers might recognize) is the tone and feeling of the Hymn. In this one, listen for all the AH and O and AW sounds that resonate throughout the Hymn. To me, there is a sense of wonder and profundity that the Greek has—very different, than, say, the Hymn to Ares/Mars or Hymn to Selene/Moon, each of which has a tone that fits the personality of its deity.
I hope you enjoy these recordings. As always, please lmk if you have suggestions for what would make these more usable/better. I’m always open to feedback! (And I love receiving photos of folks using the Hymns in their personal practice!)
Also: a reminder that I periodically update my bibliographical/resource post with articles, audio-visuals, etc related to each deity and to the Orphic Hymns more generally. I just added a few resources for Pluto/Hades, for those of you who wish to explore some of the most accessible resources I used during my translation.
Yours in Earth and Starry Sky,
✨Kristin
The Orphic Hymn to Pluto in Greek
The Orphic Hymn to Pluto in English
My usual caveat: please excuse the non-professional sound quality. These were recorded in my apartment in an old and creaky Brooklyn building, where my cats (Comet and Venus) are wandering around, and the elevator clangs at inopportune moments.
I didn’t set the Hymns to background music, because I wanted folx to be able to use them in whatever context they wish. Please lmk how you find the recordings, particularly the Ancient Greek. I’m open to any feedback you think might make these more useful to you. Just leave me a comment below.
My usual 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.