While it is nigh impossible to separate the poetry of Sappho from her music, some words about the latter is in place:

Sappho composed her own music, and invented the verse form known as Sapphics, a four-linestanza in which the first three lines are each 11 syllables long and the fourth is 5 syllables long. She also invented a 21-stringed lyre which she used to accompany herself with and beside that she also formed a society of women, a "thiasos", sharing religious and secular viewpoints. One might suppose that many of them had been educated by her as well.

She was a lyrist who developed music and poetry, letting it leave behind the viewpoints of gods and muses and move towards individual and personal themes. No one had done that before and thereby she affected a whole new stream of Greek lyrists long after her death.

Her style was melodic, the music forming a perfect harmony with the words. Of all the nine book of odes she wrote only a few fragments remain and these are songs of love, of intense emotion, yearning and reflection. Their beauty and simplicity is what made Sappho loved, admired and highly esteemed in her own day and what made her immortal for all times.

Contact: