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Apr 3, 2021 · Listen to the enchanting sound of the world’s oldest song, the Hurrian Hymn. The Hurrian Hymn was discovered in the 1950s on a clay tablet inscribed with Cuneiform text. It’s the oldest surviving melody and is over 3,400 years old.
- 2 min
- Overview
- Hurrian Hymn No. 6
- Modern Interpretations of Oldest Song
Music is likely as old as humanity. But when was the first song recorded in history?
The history of music is as old as humanity itself. Archaeologists have found primitive flutes made of bone and ivory dating back as far as 43,000 years, and it’s likely that many ancient musical styles have been preserved in oral traditions.
When it comes to specific songs, however, the oldest known examples are relatively more recent.
The earliest fragment of musical notation is found on a 4,000-year-old Sumerian clay tablet, which includes instructions and tunings for a hymn honoring the ruler Lipit-Ishtar.
But for the title of oldest extant song, most historians point to “Hurrian Hymn No. 6,” an ode to the goddess Nikkal that was composed in cuneiform by the ancient Hurrians sometime around the 14th century B.C.
The clay tablets containing the tune were excavated in the 1950s from the ruins of the city of Ugarit in Syria. Along with a near-complete set of musical notations, they also include specific instructions for how to play the song on a type of nine-stringed lyre.
“Hurrian Hymn No. 6” is considered the world’s earliest melody, but the oldest musical composition to have survived in its entirety is a first century A.D. Greek tune known as the “Seikilos Epitaph.” The song was found engraved on an ancient marble column used to mark a woman’s gravesite in Turkey.
“I am a tombstone, an image,” reads an inscription. “Seikilos placed me here as an everlasting sign of deathless remembrance.”
The well-preserved inscriptions on Seikilos Epitaph have allowed modern musicians and scholars to recreate its plaintive melodies note-for-note. Dr. David Creese of the University of Newcastle performed it using an eight-stringed instrument played with a mallet, and ancient music researcher Michael Levy has recorded a version strummed on a lyre.
There have also been several attempts to decode and play “Hurrian Hymn No. 6,” but because of difficulties in translating its ancient tablets, there is no definitive version. One of the most popular interpretations came in 2009, when Syrian composer Malek Jandali performed the ancient hymn with a full orchestra.
Music was certainly prominent in the Early Middle Ages, as attested by artistic depictions of instruments, writings about music, and other records; however, the only repertory of music which has survived from before 800 to the present day is the plainsong liturgical music of the Roman Catholic Church, the largest part of which is called ...
Aug 29, 2023 · The first-ever written piece of music dates back to 3400 years ago which was a cuneiform “alphabet”. By studying ancient cultures, researchers found drawings of musical instruments (the lyre and the flute).
Aug 14, 2020 · The Hurrian Hymn is History's first Song. Well, the oldest known song. If we're really splitting hairs: the earliest written song that can be reconstructed. ...
- 5 min
- 3.5M
- hochelaga
While the treble and bass clef are the most widely used, other clefs, which identify middle C, are used for some instruments, such as the alto clef (for viola and alto trombone) and the tenor clef (used for some cello, bassoon, tenor trombone, and double bass music).
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Aug 7, 2024 · In 650 AD, St Isidore developed a new system of writing music, using a notation called ‘neumes’. Vocal chants, which were the popular music of the time, would be written on parchment with the text, above which neumes would be notated, indicating the contour of the melody.
