Ancient music

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Ancient music is music that developed in literate cultures,

replacing prehistoric music. Ancient music refers to the
various musical systems that were developed across various
geographical regions such as Mesopotamia, India, Persia,
Egypt, China, Greece and Rome. Ancient music is
designated by the characterization of the basic notes and
scales. It may have been transmitted through oral or written
systems.

Musical eras
Prehistoric
Ancient
(before 500 AD)
Early
(5001760)
Common practice
(16001900)
Modern and contemporary (1900present)

Contents
1 Egypt
2 Mesopotamia
2.1 The harps of Ur
2.2 Hurrian music
3 Ancient India
4 Ancient China
5 Ancient Greece
6 Ancient Rome
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

Egypt
Music has been an integral part of Egyptian culture since antiquity.
The ancient Egyptians credited one of the powerful gods Hathor
with the invention of music, which Osiris in turn used as part of his
effort to civilize the world. The earliest material and representational
evidence of Egyptian musical instruments dates to the Predynastic
period, but the evidence is more securely attested in tomb paintings
from the Old Kingdom (c. 25752134 BC) when harps, end-blown
flutes (held diagonally), and single and double pipes of the clarinet
type (with single reeds) were played (Anderson, Castelo-Branco,
and Danielson 2001; Anon. 1999). Percussion instruments,and lutes
Egyptian lute players. Fresco from
were added to orchestras by the Middle Kingdom. Cymbals (Anon.
the tomb of Nebamun, a nobleman in
2003). Egyptian folk music, including the traditional Sufi dhikr
the 18th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt
rituals, are the closest contemporary music genre to ancient Egyptian
(c. 1350 BC).
music, having preserved many of its features, rhythms, and
instruments (Hickmann 1957,; Anon. 1960,). Although experiments
have been carried out with surviving Egyptian instruments (on the spacing of holes in flutes and reed pipes,
and attempts to reconstruct the stringing of lyres, harps, and lutes), only the Tutankhamun trumpets and
some percussion instruments yield any secure idea of how ancient Egyptian instruments sounded. None of
the many theories that have been formulated have any adequate foundation (Anderson, Castelo-Branco,

and Danielson 2001).

Mesopotamia
In 1986, Anne Draffkorn Kilmer from the University of California at Berkeley published her decipherment
of a cuneiform tablet from Nippur dated to about 2000 BCE. She demonstrated that they represent
fragmentary instructions for performing music, that the music was composed in harmonies of thirds, and
that it was also written using a diatonic scale (Kilmer 1986). The notation in that tablet was not as
developed as the notation in the later cuneiform tablet dated to about 1250 BCE (Kilmer 1965). The
interpretation of the notation system is still controversial, but it is clear that the notation indicates the names
of strings on a lyre, and its tuning is described in other tablets (West 1994). These tablets represent the
earliest recorded melodies, though fragmentary, from anywhere in the world (West 1994).

The harps of Ur
In 1929, Leonard Woolley discovered pieces of four harps while excavating in the ruins of the ancient city
of Ur, located in what was Ancient Mesopotamia and is contemporary Iraq. Some of the fragments are now
located at the University of Pennsylvania, in the British Museum in London, and in Baghdad. They have
been dated to 2,750 BCE. Various reconstructions have been attempted, but none have been totally
satisfactory. Depending on various definitions, they could be classed as lyres rather than harps. The most
famous is the bull-headed harp, held in Baghdad. The second Iraqi War led to the destruction of the bullhead lyre (Anon. 2005).

Hurrian music
Among the Hurrian texts from Ugarit are some of the oldest known instances of written music, dating from
c.1400 BCE and including one substantially complete song. A reconstruction of this hymn is presented at
the Urkesh webpage (http://128.97.6.202/urkeshpublic/music.htm).

Ancient India
Musical instruments, such as the seven-holed flute and various types of stringed instruments have been
recovered from the Indus valley civilization archaeological sites.
The Samaveda consists of a collection (samhita) of hymns, portions of hymns, and detached verses, all but
75 taken from the Rigveda, to be sung, using specifically indicated melodies called Samagana, by Udgatar
priests at sacrifices in which the juice of the Soma plant, clarified and mixed with milk and other
ingredients, is offered in libation to various deities. In ancient India, memorization of the sacred Vedas
included up to eleven forms of recitation of the same text.
The Ntya Shastra is an ancient Indian treatise on the performing arts, encompassing theatre, dance and
music. It was written at an uncertain date in classical India (between 200 BCE and 200 CE). The Natya
Shastra is based upon the much older Natya Veda which contained 36000 slokas (Ghosh 2002, 2).
Unfortunately there are no surviving copies of the Natya Veda. There are scholars who believe that it may
have been written by various authors at different times. The most authoritative commentary on the Natya
Shastra is Abhinavabharati by Abhinava Gupta.
While much of the discussion of music in the Natyashastra focuses on musical instruments, it also
emphasizes several theoretical aspects that remained fundamental to Indian music:
1. Establishment of Shadja as the first, defining note of the scale or grama.

2. Two Principles of Consonance: The first principle states that there exists a fundamental note in the
musical scale which is Avinashi (") and Avilopi (") that is, the note is ever-present
and unchanging. The second principle, often treated as law, states that there exists a natural
consonance between notes; the best between Shadja and Tar Shadja, the next best between Shadja
and Pancham.
3. The Natyashastra also suggests the notion of musical modes or jatis which are the origin of the
notion of the modern melodic structures known as ragas. Their role in invoking emotions are
emphasized; thus compositions emphasizing the notes gandhara or rishabha are said to be related to
tragedy (karuna rasa) whereas rishabha is to be emphasized for evoking heroism (vIra rasa).
Jatis are elaborated in greater detail in the text Dattilam, composed around the same time as the
Natyashastra.

Ancient China
Legend has it that the qin, the most revered of all Chinese musical
instruments, has a history of about 5,000 years. This legend states
that the legendary figures of China's pre-history Fuxi, Shennong
and Huang Di, the "Yellow Emperor" were involved in its
A famous Tang Dynasty (618907)
creation. Nearly all qin books and tablature collections published
qin, the "Jiu Xiao Huan Pei"
prior to the twentieth century state this as the actual origins of the
qin (Yin n.d., 110), although this is now presently viewed as
mythology. It is mentioned in Chinese writings dating back nearly 3,000 years, and examples have been
found in tombs from about 2,500 years ago. The exact origins of the qin is still a very much continuing
subject of debate over the past few decades.

Ancient Greece
Ancient Greek musicians developed their own robust system of
musical notation. The system was not widely used among Greek
musicians, but nonetheless a modest corpus of notated music
remains from Ancient Greece and Rome. The epics of Homer were
originally sung with instrumental accompaniment, but no notated
melodies from Homer are known. Several complete songs exist in
ancient Greek musical notation. Three complete hymns by
Mesomedes of Crete (2nd century CE) exist in manuscript. In
addition, many fragments of Greek music are extant, including
fragments from tragedy, among them a choral song by Euripides for
his Orestes and an instrumental intermezzo from Sophocles' Ajax.

Symposium scene, c. 490 BCE

Some fragments of Greek music, such as the Orestes fragment, clearly call for more than one note to be
sounded at the same time. Greek sources occasionally refer to the technique of playing more than one note
at the same time. In addition, double pipes, such as used by the Greeks and Persians, and ancient bagpipes,
as well as a review of ancient drawings on vases and walls, etc., and ancient writings (such as in Aristotle,
Problems, Book XIX.12) which described musical techniques of the time, all indicate harmony existed.

Ancient Rome
The music of ancient Rome borrowed heavily from the music of the cultures that were conquered by the
empire, including music of Greece, Egypt, and Persia. Music was incorporated into many areas of Roman

life including the military, entertainment in the Roman theater, religious ceremonies and practices, and
"almost all public/civic occasions."
The philosopher-theorist Boethius was one of the best known musicians of the time, although he wasn't a
musician at all, with his work being regarded as a stepping stone during the Latin Middle Ages and the
Medieval period. His work The Principles of Music (better-known under the title De institutione musica)
divided music into three types: Musica mundana (music of the universe), musica humana (music of human
beings), and musica instrumentalis (instrumental music). Additionally, his work the Quadrivium was used
to understand dissonance and consonance in music (Anon. 2001).

See also
Prehistoric music
Ravanahatha

References
Anderson, Robert, Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco, and Virginia Danielson. "Egypt, Arab Republic
of (Jumhuriyat Misr al-Arabiya)". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second
edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001.
Anon. "Rythme, mtre et mesure de la musique instrumentale et vocale des anciens Egyptiens." Acta
Musicologica 32, no. 1 (JanuaryMarch 1960): 1122.
Anon. "Music in Ancient Egypt
(http://www.umich.edu/~kelseydb/Exhibits/MIRE/Introduction/AncientEgypt/AncientEgypt.html)".
Music in Roman Egypt: An Exhibition at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology 19 March19
December 1999 (accessed 28 June 2014).
Anon. "Music of Ancient Rome" (http://www.aug.edu/~cshotwel/2001.Rome.htm). Georgia Regents
University Augusta (2001). Retrieved 2013-05-28.
Anon. "Cymbals: UC 33268 (http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/metal/uc33268.html)". University
College London website, 2003 (accessed 28 June 2014).
Anon., 'Ancient Iraqi Harp Reproduced by Liverpool Engineers
(http://web.archive.org/web/20100701185936/http://www.liv.ac.uk/news/press_releases/2005/07/lyre_
of_ur.htm)'. University of Liverpool website (28 July 2005). Archive from 1 July 2010 (Accessed 21
May 2013).
Ghosh, Manomohan (ed.), Natyasastra: Ascribed to Bharata-Muni [II,]1 Translation. Chapters IXXVII: A Treatise on Ancient Indian Dramaturgy and Histrionics, completely translated for the first
time from the original Sanskrit with an introduction, various notes, and index. The Chowkhamba
Sanskrit Studies 118 [part 3] (Varanasi: Chowkhambha Sanskrit Series Office2002). ISBN 81-7080076-5.
Hickmann, Hans. "Un Zikr Dans le Mastaba de Debhen, Guzah (IVme Dynastie)." Journal of the
International Folk Music Council 9 (1957): 59-62.
Kilmer, Anne Draffkorn, 'The Strings of Musical Instruments: their Names, Numbers, and
Significance', Studies in Honor of Benno Landsberger = Assyriological Studies xvi (1965), 26168.
Kilmer, Anne Draffkorn, and Miguel Civil. 'Old Babylonian Musical Instructions Relating to
Hymnody', Journal of Cuneiform Studies, xxxviii (1986), 9498.
West, M. L., 'The Babylonian Musical Notation and the Hurrian Melodic Texts', Music & Letters,
lxxv, no. 2 (May 1994), 16179.
Yin, Wei. n.d. Zhongguo Qinshi Yanyi .

External links

Reconstructed bone flutes, sound sample and playing instructions.

(http://www.ancientinstruments.co.uk)
International Study Group on Music Archaeology (http://www.musicarchaeology.org/)
Musica Romana: Ensemble for ancient music (http://www.musica-romana.de/)
Ancient Greek music on original instruments : Daimonia Nymphe
(http://www.myspace.com/daemonianymphemyspace)
Ensemble Krylos (http://www.kerylos.fr/index_en.php), a music group led by scholar Annie Blis
and dedicated to the recreation of ancient Greek and Roman music.
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Categories: Ancient music
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