Annie Bélis

Annie Bélis is a French archaeologist, philologist, papyrologist and musician. She is a research director at the French CNRS, specialised in music from classical antiquity, Greek and Roman.

Career

Former student of the École normale supérieure in Sèvres from 1972 to 1975, she passed the agrégation in ancient literature in 1976. Then, Annie Bélis joined the Fondation Thiers from 1979 à 1982. She finished her PhD during her last year at Fondation Thiers and defended it at Paris-Sorbonne University. The same year, she entered the French School at Athens (1982–1986). In 1986, she published her book Aristoxène de Tarente et Aristote ; le Traité d'Harmonique for which she received the médaille Georges Perrot from the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. She got her first position at CNRS as tenured Research Scientist (chargée de recherches) in 1986 and is still with CNRS.

She is currently a member of the AOROC laboratory at ENS Ulm.

Musical studies

Annie Bélis learnt playing the piano with Yvonne Lefébure, the organ and counterpoint with Arsène Bedois, the flute with Serge Kalisky, and the cello with Jeoffrey Walz.

Direction of the Ensemble Kérylos

At the beginning of the 90's, Annie Bélis created the Ensemble Kérylos with the goal to recreate music as it was during classical antiquity as faithfully as possible. Three parts are to be considered to reach such a goal : deciphering musical papyri coming from antiquity, part of her scientific work as a papyrologist ; reconstructing the ancient instruments needed to play the music, what she did based on archaeological fonts and with the help of French and Spanish luthiers J.-C. Condi and C. Gonzalez; and the last part, performing the scores, the reason why she founded the Ensemble Kérylos. In 1996, under her direction, the Ensemble Kérylos recorded a CD : " De la pierre au son : Musiques de l'Antiquité grecque et romaine ".

Bibliography

• Annie Bélis, Aristoxène de Tarente et Aristote : le " Traité d'Harmonique ", Paris, Klincksieck, coll. " Études et commentaires ", vol. C, 1986.
• Annie Bélis, Les musiciens dans l'Antiquité, Paris, Hachette-Littératures, coll. " La vie quotidienne ", 1999.

References

• (French) article by Thomas Schlesser on Rue89 dedicated to Annie Bélis, for the exhibition "Alexandre Le Grand" at Musée du Louvre.
• (French) interview of Annie Bélis on Europe1 radio station (Les récits d'Europe 1 soir).
• (French) show dedicated to ancient music on Fréquence protestante radio station (5/01/2014) with A. Bélis and Michel Petrossian.

External links

• (French) Webpage of Annie Bélis
• Ensemble Kérylos, the musical group led by Annie Bélis.