MUSIC composing has been in the making for centuries, ever since the birth of classics such as Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and many more, the making of beautiful music has never ceased to amaze the masses.
As much as the above legends have come and gone, did music composing already exist centuries ago?
Was the world’s oldest song written 3400 years ago before Christ?
VERDICT:
TRUE
According to FarOut Music, a ‘sheet’ of music was discovered in the ancient Syrian city of Ugarit and referenced back to around 3,400 years ago.
Called the Hurrian songs – known as the Hurrian Hymns – are recognised as a collection of music that was inscribed onto clay tablets at some point in history.
These tablets in later years, were discovered by historians from the ancient Amorite city of Ugarit. Many historians believe the date to be approximately 1400 BCE.
It was believed that the song was also dedicated to the goddess of orchards.
Hurrians along with Urartians are considered to be the direct ancestors of modern Armenians. According to Diakonoff, the present-day Armenians are therefore an amalgam of the Hurrians and Urartians.
According to Dr. Johannes Lehman in his book ‘The Hittites, all indications point toward the general region of Armenia as a main area of Hurrian concentration.
The article further explained that Lowie Museum of Anthropology at Berkeley curator Professor Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, spent 15 years deciphering the clay tablets which were uncovered and excavated in Syria by French archaeologists in the early 1950s. The tablets, it has been confirmed, formed “a complete cult hymn and is the oldest preserved song with notation in the world”.
Kilmer, who is also a professor of Assyriology at the University of California, worked alongside her colleagues Richard L. Crocker and Robert R. Brown to create a definitive record and booklet about the song, which has been called the ‘Sounds From Silence’.
“We can match the number of syllables in the text of the song with the number of notes indicated by the musical notations,” Kilmer was quoted as saying.
“This approach produces harmonies rather than a melody of single notes. The chances the number of syllables would match the notation numbers without intention are astronomical,” she added.
Richard Crocker, Kilmer’s colleague, said: “This has revolutionised the whole concept of the origin of Western music”.
“The problem with this tablet is that – we could read the script because it was written in Babylonian cuneiform, and we know the value of the signs – but we didn’t have any idea what it meant, Richard Dumbrill, professor of archaeomusicology at Babylon University in Iraq, later commented. “These people migrated towards north-west Syria – it took them a good couple of thousand years – and decided to use the Babylonian signs to write their text and their music,”
“So it was extremely difficult to translate. However, I managed to find out that the text below the two lines were musical names that were Hurrianised – that is, they were Babylonian but had been transformed on contact with the Hurrian people. And I could find out that it was a melody. It took me about 20 years to translate,” Dumbrill added.
Over the years, a music video was played by musician and composer Michael Levy, as quoted by the Mail, focusing on “intensively researching and recreating the ancient playing techniques of the lyres of antiquity.”
References:
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https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/
