KS2 Music: Ancient Greece. Song: 'Build up stones and sculptures'

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The song and other video content explores the achievements of Ancient Greek civilisation in architecture, theatre and the arts.

The song

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'Build up stones and sculptures' - vocal

A celebration of Greek architecture, columns, temples, theatres, statues and sculpture.

The strong, stately melody rises then falls symmetrically, starting at the ‘root’ note © as a ‘foundation’ to build on and return to. There is a stable, steady beat throughout the song, which features four square phrases in 4/4 time - suggesting rational, careful building.

The sound world highlights lyres, ancient horns/trumpets (such as the salpinx), panpipes and flutes. There’s also a range of percussion patterns to evoke the hard work of making and building by hand.

Refer to the for more information about the song, including follow-up music activities based on it and suggestions for cross-curricular study.

Context: what contribution did Ancient Greece make to architecture, theatre and the arts?

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We meet the dramatist Euripides (c 480 BCE - c 406 BCE) who introduces us to the various forms of art and architecture enjoyed by the Ancient Greeks and explains how their artwork reveals many details of how the Ancient Greeks lived.

Euripides explains the importance of Greek drama and how the first theatre was cut into the cliff below the Acropolis in the centre of Athens. He describes how theatres were designed with tiered seating to enable the audience to see, and how the actors wore special masks to amplify their voices so that everyone could hear.

He describes the features of Ancient Greek architecture - including symmetry, straight lines and columns - and how Greek ceramic art, which often depicted scenes of everyday life, has provided historians with so much evidence of how the Ancient Greeks lived.