Let's have a thread sharing and discussing some historical music, shall we?
I'll start with some Ancient Greek music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mIXEBxW89s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPCtQe8RN4c
The two Delphic Hymns to Apollo. The 1st one was probably written by Athēnaios, son of Athēnaios in 138 BC, while the 2nd one was written in 128 BC by Limenios. Both were written for the occasion of Pythian Games in Delphi, a festival similar to the more famous Olympic Games. Just as the Olympic Games were performed in honour of Zeus, the Pythian games were performed in honour of Apollo, who had an oracle in Delphi. Apollo was also the leader of the nine Muses, so he was therefore also a patron deity of artists, so the Pythian games also included competitions in music, acting and painting.
Ancient Greek music differed from current Western European music in that it's not based on scales and harmony, but on musical modes. Each musical mode is a set of notes that is used to construct melodic progression (somewhat similar to the rāgas in Indian classical music), which helps set the tonal temperament of the melody. Each musical mode was traditionally named after a Greek tribe and each of them was ascribed a certain characteristic (for example, the Dorian mode was described by Plato as harsh). However, in practice this wasn't always 100% followed (which Plato didn't like, he preferred well-constructed to good-sounding music). Both Delphic Hymns switch modes; the first one has two long parts while the second one has 10 sections. The main reason for this was the limitation of instruments, which were tuned to a specific scale and weren't as versatile as modern instruments.
But, how do we know what the music actually sounded like? Ancient Greeks also devised their own system of musical notation, which was described well enough that scholars were able to transcribe several surviving pieces of music into modern notation. By constructing instruments that look similar to those on depictions (and sometimes taking inspiration from similar looking surviving folk instruments), we are able to get close enough to reconstructing the real thing.
Typical Ancient Greek musical instruments were:
— the lyre and the (more professional) kithara: string instruments played by strumming or plucking; they had a set of strings tuned to the notes in the mode used in the musical piece played;
— the aulos: a (usually) double pipe instrument, with a double reed, similar to the oboe, and also to the pipes of the bagpipe; it was also described as having a penetrating and exciting sound (again akin to the bagpipes?);
— the panpipes: a set of pipes, again tuned to a specific scale;
— the bukanē: a curved brass tube, the precursor of modern trumpet, trombone, and other brass instruments;
— the hydraulis: a hydraulic organ; in which foaming water is driven into the wind chamber with several pipes that can be opened to play the tones; the pressure to blow the pipes is thus provided by the flowing water instead of bellows or a compressor as in later organ instruments, but requires a continuous water source to operate.