Myths about Music

In the Spring and Autumn period, a master guqin player named Yu Boya found his only true musical soulmate in a humble woodcutter named Zhong Ziqi. When Ziqi died, Boya was so overcome with grief that he smashed his instrument and cut its strings, vowing never to play again as the only person who understood his music was gone. This legend is the origin of the term 'Zhiyin,' meaning a soulmate...

The myth of Marsyas recounts the tragic fate of a Phrygian satyr who, after mastering the aulos abandoned by Athena, dared to challenge the god Apollo to a musical contest. Judged by the Muses, Marsyas was ultimately defeated by Apollo's divine trickery and sentenced to a brutal execution by being flayed alive. This story serves as a stark warning against hubris and the perilous nature of...

Following his failure to rescue Eurydice from the Underworld, the master musician Orpheus retreated to the slopes of Mount Olympus, where he shunned all women and turned his devotion to Apollo. His refusal to participate in the ecstatic rituals of Dionysus led to a violent confrontation with the Maenads. In a frenzy of divine madness, the women tore him limb from limb, an act so horrific that...

Amphion and Zethus, the twin sons of Zeus and Antiope, were separated from their mother at birth and raised by shepherds on Mount Cithaeron. Upon reuniting with their mother and avenging her mistreatment at the hands of King Lycus and Queen Dirce, they seized the throne of Thebes. The brothers are most famous for building the city's massive fortifications, where Zethus used his great strength...

The wild god Pan fell in love with the chaste nymph Syrinx and pursued her through the rugged landscape of Arcadia. To escape him, she fled to the banks of the River Ladon and begged for transformation, turning into hollow water reeds. Pan, mourning his lost love, used the reeds to create the first musical pipe, which he named the syrinx in her honor.

King Midas of Phrygia is granted a wish by Dionysus and chooses that everything he touches turn to gold, only to find it a deadly curse when he cannot eat or drink. After being cured by the River Pactolus, he later offends the god Apollo by favoring Pan's rustic music, resulting in his ears being transformed into those of a donkey.

The master musician Orpheus descends into the depths of the Underworld to rescue his beloved wife Eurydice after her tragic death. Through the power of his lyre, he convinces Hades to let her go, but his own doubt leads to a second, final tragedy on the threshold of the living world.

On the day of his birth on Mount Cyllene, the infant god Hermes escaped his cradle to steal fifty sacred cows from his brother Apollo. He cleverly hid their tracks by making them walk backward and inventing giant brushwood sandals for himself. The myth concludes with the invention of the lyre and a diplomatic resolution between the brothers on Mount Olympus.