Sunday, June 24, 2018

Sunday morning music

Here's a real piece of music history - in fact, almost the oldest music history we have.

The Seikilos Epitaph is the oldest known complete piece of music, including a primitive music notation and lyrics.  Wikipedia describes it:

The Seikilos epitaph is the oldest surviving complete musical composition, including musical notation, from anywhere in the world. The epitaph has been dated variously from around 200 BC to around AD 100, but the first century AD is the most probable guess. The song, the melody of which is recorded, alongside its lyrics, in the ancient Greek musical notation, was found engraved on a tombstone (a stele) from the Hellenistic town Tralles near present-day Aydın, Turkey, not far from Ephesus.

Here's the stele.

And here's what the song sounds like.

Music historians are generally agreed on the transliteration of the ancient musical form to a modern equivalent, so I guess that rendition is pretty reliable.  If it's not, don't make a lyre out of me!



McChuck said...

Peter -
Where's the blurb for your wife's new book?
"Shattered Under Midnight", by Dorothy Grant, is now available on Kindle.




Old NFO said...

Interesting find, and more interesting that someone was able to 'accurately' reproduce it!

John Cunningham said...

This strikes a responsive chord, Peter, but are you just stringing us along? Or seeking to drum up support? Maybe trying to get us on the bandwagon?