Ancient Song
The oldest musical instruments yet found are flutes made from bone and estimated to be—brace yourselves—35,000 years old. Wow. Then there's this tantalizing bit:
The sound produced by the flute "is almost identical to tones of the major scale played on today's flute," says Nikolaj Tarasov, a recorder specialist at the Music University of Karlsruhe in Germany. The five-holed instrument—carved from the bone of a griffon vulture—might be capable of expressing greater harmonic variety than the modern-day flute, he says.Not enough information, people! It's almost exactly like our modern scale, only better???? How now, brown cow? Nevertheless, these flutes are seven more sticks in the eye of that arch-fiend and enemy of all tonality, M. Boulez. 35,000 years of brawny cave-man musicianship beats a few decades of etiolated, frenchified, 20th century intellectuals in my book.
The flutes were discovered in Hohle Fels, a cave in the Swabian mountains in present-day southwestern Germany. I expect the craftsman who invented them shouted "I have today made a discovery that will ensure the supremacy of German music for the next 35,000 years!" If so, he was right.
It would be too bad if these ancient artifacts are too fragile to handle. I'd love to hear something relatively recent on them. Something like the Bach B minor Sonata for flute and harpsichord. Shades of "To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence" and all that.
Labels: Culture
Umie the Umlaut says, "ask your doctor about the Fredösphere!"
2 Comments:
A 35,000 year old trumpet-now that would be something. But a 35,000 year old flute? Meh.
Even if too fragile to handle, I suspect that modern computer 3-d scanning technology could lead to a production of a modern analogue that could then be played. True, it would be like measuring a Stradivarius and trying to use the same kind of wood and getting something that was "sort of but not quite," but how lovely to be able to hear music played that our very ancient ancestors might have known.
Post a Comment
<< Home