The Odyssey Returns

Nearly three thousand years after the epic traditionally attributed to Homer first took shape in Greece, Odysseus is once again sailing across the popular imagination. Christopher Nolan’s new film The Odyssey brings one of the ancient world’s most enduring stories to a new generation.

The Odyssey follows the Greek hero Odysseus on his long and perilous journey home after the Trojan War—a voyage filled with strange lands, unexpected encounters, daunting challenges, and lessons learned along the way.

That idea of an odyssey—a journey of discovery in which every new encounter teaches us something—was also part of the inspiration behind Around the World in Twenty-One Trumpets: A Brass Odyssey, first published in 2017.

"Greeks! Romans! Barbarians! Lend me your Trumpets!"

Our unlikely traveler is Ragnar, a prehistoric toolmaker who learns to make lip-blown sounds on a variety of natural objects. He is unexpectedly swept across time and around the world, encountering an amazing variety of lip-blown instruments from different cultures and historical periods. With every new encounter, Ragnar listens, observes, and learns—expanding his own musical abilities while discovering the many roles lip-blown instruments play in the lives of the people he meets.

His curiosity and eagerness to learn open unexpected doors along the way. Whether he finds himself playing one of the Egyptian šnb (sne-heb) trumpets in the Pharaoh's ceremonial procession, or a cornu for a Roman legion in battle against the Celts at Hadrian's Wall, the musical skills Ragnar acquires become his passport into new cultures, unexpected opportunities, and extraordinary challenges.

And like Odysseus, for all the extraordinary places he visits and people he encounters, Ragnar yearns to return home. His own odyssey ultimately brings him full circle—back to his cave and his best friend Annika.

The Odyssey is traditionally attributed to Homer and is generally believed to have taken written form in the late eighth or early seventh century BCE, near the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age (both bronze and iron are mentioned throughout the poem).

While the salpinx is not specifically mentioned in the Odyssey, Homer evokes its unmistakable sound in a vivid simile in the Iliad, where Achilles' battle cry rings out like the piercing call of a trumpet sounding the alarm from a city under siege. The passage suggests that Homer's audience would have immediately recognized both the instrument and everything its sound represented.

In Around the World in Twenty-One Trumpets: A Brass Odyssey, students encounter the salpinx itself—the long, straight trumpet of ancient Greece. With its powerful, penetrating sound, it served military, ceremonial, and entertainment purposes before eventually finding a place in one of the most celebrated institutions of the Greek world: the Olympic Games.

There, trumpet playing became the opening event of the festival. The victorious trumpeter earned the honor of sounding the salpinx to summon competitors, announce the contests, and guide the progress of the Games. Among the most celebrated of these competitors was Herodorus of Megara, whose repeated victories made him one of antiquity's most renowned trumpeters.

Ragnar encounters this remarkable tradition through another familiar historical figure: Alexander the Great. In our story, Alexander meets Ragnar aboard a Greek trireme and introduces him to Herodorus, who becomes Ragnar's teacher and mentor. Although fictional, this encounter opens the door to one of the most fascinating aspects of ancient Greek culture: the central role of music in education.

Music was considered an essential part of a child's education in ancient Greece. Greek philosophers believed it played a vital role in shaping both character and intellect. Music was regarded as a mathematical science, reflecting the close relationship the Greeks recognized between numerical ratios, musical intervals, and the natural order of the world. These ideas later formed one of the four mathematical disciplines of the quadrivium, alongside arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy.

Plato believed that music profoundly influenced the soul, writing that "the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning." His student Aristotle, who later became the teacher of Alexander the Great, also wrote about music and education and even discussed the playing of the salpinx.

For brass players, the relationship between music and mathematics takes on a very practical form: the harmonic series. Often mysterious to those who have never played a brass instrument, it is the natural sequence of notes that can be produced without valves, slides, or keys. Every brass player, from beginner to professional, must learn to hear and navigate the intervallic relationships inherent to it.

Although the ancient Greeks did not describe the harmonic series as we understand it today, the discoveries associated with the philosopher and polymath Pythagoras revealed the mathematical relationships between musical pitches that ultimately underlie it. Students encounter those same relationships as Ragnar discovers increasingly sophisticated lip-blown instruments and experience them for themselves as they learn to play the natural trumpet.

Finally, while Homer's Odyssey features gods, goddesses, monsters, and storm-tossed seas, Ragnar experiences his own encounters with Greek mythology. As a belief system, Greek mythology not only shaped the ancient world but has continued to influence literature, art, and popular culture for centuries. In Greek mythology, the conch shell—one of the earliest trumpet-like instruments—was associated with Triton, the sea messenger and son of Poseidon, who could summon or calm the waves by sounding his shell trumpet.

In Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, Odysseus, played by Matt Damon, grapples with chaotic stormy seas controlled by Poseidon, ultimately delaying Odysseus’s journey home. In our book, Ragnar travels the world looking for trumpets, and sails into a terrible storm. He hears the sound of a conch shell (an instrument used to this day in coastal areas for signaling) before drifting, exhausted into calmer waters.

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Bibliography

Bowyer, Carolyn Susan. Echoes of the salpinx: the trumpet in ancient Greek culture. MPhil. Dissertation. Royal Holloway, University of London, 2016.

Holmes, Peter. The Horn and Trumpet in Ancient Europe and the Middle East, Book 1: Horns and Trumpets of the Iron Age. London: ABCo Design Ltd, 2022.

________. Echoes of Greece and Rome: The Trumpets of the Ancient Olympics. London: ABCo Design Ltd, 2024.

________. “The Greek and Etruscan Salpinx.” in: A. A. Both/R. Eichmann/E. Hickmann/L.-C. Koch (eds.), Challe

Homer. The Iliad, Trans. Robert Fagles. New York and London: Penguin Books, 1990.

________. The Odyssey, Trans. Robert Fagles. New York and London: Penguin Books, 1996.

Xanthoulis, Nikos. “The Salpinx in Greek Antiquity.” International Trumpet Guild Journal, (Oct., 2006), 39-45.