Thursday, March 24, 2011

The Oldest Melody In The World

I stumbled across Klezfiddle's YouTube channel and on it he's put his own lute recording of the oldest melody that has come down to us from history. As Klezfiddle explains, [this was] "transcribed from the original Cuneiform text by Prof. Richard Dumbrill. The ancient text indicates the names of specific lyre strings, and Prof Dumbrill interpreted the musical intervals also notated in the 3400 year old Cuneiform text! All details in his book, The Archeomusicology of the Ancient Near East." I find this piece really eerie, but also amazing; for some reason I thought there was no musical notation before the middle ages. Klezfiddle goes a bit Jimmy Page at the end which I think might not quite be in the Cuneiform.