EVIDENCE OF HARMONY IN ANCIENT MUSIC

seraph

The Oldest Song in the World

For fifteen years Prof. Anne Draffkorn Kilmer puzzled over clay tablets relating to music including some excavated in Syria by French archaeologists in the early '50s. The tablets from the Syrian city of ancient Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra) were about 3400 years old, had markings called cuneiform signs in the hurrian language (with borrowed akkadian terms) that provided a form of musical notation. One of the texts formed a complete cult hymn and is the oldest preserved song with notation in the world. Finally in 1972, Kilmer, who is professor of Assyriology, University of California, and a curator at the Lowie Museum of Anthropology at Berkeley, developed an interpretation of the song based on her study of the notation.......
http://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/evidence.htm

elektro80 · Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2003 1:59 pm Post subject:

WOW!

mosc · Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2003 9:11 am Post subject:

Yes, WOW. I went to the article. Not really electro-music, but interesting. I clicked on the score as the text said you'd hear a midi file of the music. I forgot that I had midi set to go not to a General Midi device, but to my trusty Nord Modular. This music started playing on a patch I have been developing which is quite unstable. The effect was very dramatic. I thought for a minute that this is what the ancients were grooving on in the old days. It was humbling. Then I realized what had happend and swiched MIDI to my GM Soundcanvas. Not the same, but it holds up with chant from the Middle Ages pretty well.

I don't know anything about Assyrian music. (That's proably not true because having seen this web page, I know more about Assyrian music than most people.) Anyway, my guess is that the music was more rhythmically interesting.

seraph · Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2003 9:21 am Post subject:

http://users.rcn.com/dante.interport/hartheory2.html

Welcome to Harmonic Theory and Just Intonation