Highlights of MUSIC from 60000 BCE to 500 BCE

Around 60,000 years ago, humans made a cultural leap forward and began producing cave paintings and making jewelry. At the same time, they probably also started to make music

Various theories have been put forward about the origins of music and its evolutionary purpose. It may , for example, have initially evolved from early human’s imitation of animal cries, and even served the same purpose as the mating calls and displays of animals.

Modern researches have noted how close music is to speech, especially in the “tonal” languages of Africa and Asia, in which pitch is used to distinguish words, not just emotion or emphasis. It is thought that music and speech may have evolved together.

The first resource of music was undoubtedly the human voice. It is though that as soon as speech evolved, humans began augmenting with words with tonal pitch, as well as other vocal tricks such a clicks, whistles, and humming. The only accompaniment to the voice would have been rhythmic clapping and stamping.

CHARLES DARWIN

“Musical notes.. were first acquired... for the sake of charming the opposite sex.”

-          Charles Darwin, Naturalist, 1871

THE FIRST INSTRUMENTS

Humans found their first musical instruments in their natural environment, identifying objects – pieces of wood, stone, horn, or bone that would make a sound when blown or beaten.

35000 years ago, for example, stone age humans living in the "hohle fels" cave in what is now southern Germany made finger holes in a vulture’s wing bone to create a kind of flute.

PRIMITIVE XYLOPHONES

“idiophones” – instruments made from solid resonant materials that vibrate to produce sound – played a large role in prehistoric music. They include slit drums, made by hollowing out a split tree trunk, a primitive xylophone ; rattles made by filling gourds with seeds and stones ; scrapers such as a rough stick rasped against bones or shell; and plucked instruments such as the Jew’s harp, a simple string instrument held in the mouth.

Many types of drums were made by stretching animal skins over bowls, hollow gourds, or wooden frames.

Wind instruments were made from conch shells, hollow bones, bamboo, reeds, and part of trees, and were blown with the mouth or the nose.

Finger holes could be stopped or unstopped to vary the pitch, although these early instruments had no significant melodic potential.

SPIRITUAL ROLE

For primitive humans, music was an essential element in rituals and ceremonies that bound a society to its dead ancestors and its totemic animals or plants.

It was used as a means of communicating with the benign or malevolent spirits that controlled the fate of a society or individual.

SHAMAN

In many societies, the “shaman” was (and is) someone who acted as an intermediary between the spirit and the human worlds. An individual with special power to enter ecstatic states through trance, he performed rituals in which words, melody, gestures, and dance were inseparable, his voice accompanied by the beats of a drum.

The powers of the “shaman” might be called upon for healing or to summon rain.

MUSIC AS HISTORY

 In west Africa, the tradition of the “griot” singer and story teller has survived into the modern day. The “griot’s” tales preserved a detailed record of local events and celebrations such as births, wars and hunting expeditions, as well as a wider repository of legend. It was also the griot’s function to invent praise songs honoring the local ruler.

GRIOT SINGERS

NEW MATERIALS

The beginning of the “Bronze Age”, usually dated to around 5000 years ago, saw the use of copper and bronze(a copper alloy) to make implements ranging from weaponry and agricultural tools to musical instruments.

The latter include the curved “bronze horns” known as “lurs” that have been found in Denmark and northern Germany.

A LEAP FORWARD

The development of settled agricultural societies in different places led to an increase in population density and the founding of towns and cities.

Metal tools – bronze and then iron – began to replace stone.

MESOPOTAMIA

In Mesopotamia, the Indus valley, Egypt, and china, hierarchical states dominated by secular rulers and priests emerged. These societies developed various forms of writing.

MUSIC’s CRADLE

Over thousands of years, the worlds oldest civilizations, in Mesopotamia, Egypt, northern India, and china developed music traditions. Although the sound of their music has been lost, surviving artifacts show the vigor of music-making in these ancient societies.

Around 4,500 years ago, hundreds of musicians worked in the service of the priests and secular rulers of the Sumerian city-state of “Ur” , in southern Mesopotamia (Modern day Iraq).

A few beautifully made Sumerian lyres have survived into the present day – they are the oldest existing string instruments.

The Sumerians also played harps and lutes, plus varieties of wooden flutes and reed pipes.

Percussions included drums, tambourines, clappers and a kind of metal shaker known as “sistrum”

INDIAN TRADITION

The distinctive musical tradition of India must have had its origins in the Indus valley civilization that flourished from 2600 to 1900 BCE, but little is known about this period.

From around 1500 BCE, the sacred Hindu texts known as the VEDAS emerged. Some of these were recited, but others were chanted or sung.

King Ravana – a follower of the deity Shiva in the Hindu epic, The Ramayana – is credited with the invention of the “ravanatha” a bowed string instrument made out of a coconut shell and bamboo.

Another Indian instrument that had survived from antiquity is the “mrudangam”, a double sided drum, which in Hindu mythology , is said to have been played by the bull – god “Nandi”

A range of plucked stringed instruments, the “veena”, are believed to date back to the times of the Vedas.

Many of Indian instruments prominent in Indian classical music today, including the sitar and table, are of medieval origin.

BELLS,CHIMES AND SILENCE

China has a continuous musical tradition stretching back 3000 years. From the earliest times, its mix of instruments was distinctive, including the prominent role assigned to bells And chime stones – slabs of stone hung from wooden frame and struck with a padded mallet.

The “SHENG” a for of mouth organ with bamboo pipes, and varieties of zither have remained central to Chinese music through its history

SHENG INSTRUMENT

The Chinese also developed a distinctive aesthetic, in particular exploiting the effect of sounds fading into silence.

The Chinese opera developed from the third century BCE, and from the period of the TANG dynasty(618 – 907 CE) a popular music scene flourished in Chinese cities

WRITTEN MUSIC

There is evidence of the use of musical notation in China from the 5^th century BCE.

A PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW

Ancient Greek philosophers, including Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle, believed that studying music was central to gaining an understanding of the nature of the universe. For this reason, they gave music a prominent role in education.

Pythagoras of Samos, who lived from around 570 – 493 BCE, is generally believed to hve been the first Greek philosopher to develop a theory around music and its importance in the universe.

Pythagoras was intrigued by the higher and lower sounds that he heard produced by hammers of different sizes in a blacksmiths workshop.

Experimenting with a monochord – a stringed instrument – he studied the relation ship between the pitch of a note and the length of the string that produced it.

He then figured out numerical ratios between the notes and theorized  about how they affected the musical harmony.

HEAVENLY MUSIC

In Greek cosmology, the universe was believed to consist of a series of spheres with the earth at their center. There was a sphere for the moon, the sun, each of the planets, and for the fixed stars.

Pythagoras believer that there was a numerical relationship between this spheres that corresponded to musical harmony.

Their movements generated what he described as a “music of the spheres”

PYTHAGORAS - MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

He believed that this music was imperceptible to the human ear but that it was nevertheless a sign of the fundamental harmony of the universe.

EARLY  NOTATION

The oldest surviving written music is marked on a clay tablet found at Sumer, in Mesopotamia, and dates from around 2000BCE. The marks probably gave only  a rough idea of pitch.

Evidence of true musical notation – giving both the pitch an length of notes – comes from ancient Greece  inscribed stone fragments known as the “Delphic hymns”, they show melodies, written to be sung in Athens in 138 and 128 BCE.

DELPHIC HYMNS

The oldest composition to have survived is thought to be the Seikilos Epitaph, which has the words ad melody of a song. Carved on a tombstone found in turkey, near the ancient Greek city of Ephesus, it is likely to date from the 1^st century BCE

MYTH AND TRAGEDY

In Greek mythology, the lyre-player “Orpheus” was identified as the “father of songs”

It was said that no living thing could resist the spell of music , which could tame wild animals and even move stones.

The lyre was also the chosen instrument of the god of music, “Apollo”, who was in addition, the god of healing, poetry and the Sun.

GOD OF MUSIC - APOLLO

The lyre was regarded as the quintessential Greek instrument – at least by the elite. It existed in several forms, from the simple, two-stringed lyre through the “phorminx” (up to seven strings ) to the sophisticated seven-string “kithara” which was strummed with a plectrum.

LYRE INSTRUMENT

“Rhythm and Harmony find their way into the inner places of the soul” – Plato, “the Republic”

NEW MODES. 

In early medieval western Europe, a system of “modes” was adopted for religious chants. Although they used names of the ancient Greek scales, these :Gregorian modes” were musically completely different from their ancient Greek predecessors.

GREGORIAN CHANT

The nearest modern -day equivalent to the Greek-chorus might be the opera chorus or the church choir, which contributes musical interludes to the words of a service.

In ancient Rome, audiences enjoyed music at the theater, at banquets, in the arena during gladiatorial combat, and in the street. Music added dignity and solemnity to rituals and ceremonies, and musicians accompanied the roman legions to war.

ANCIENT ROME

Well these are the highlights of music from 60000 BCE to 500 BCE

Hope you like this article and ill be back with a super interesting article on “Music in  the middle ages” (500 – 1400)

See Ya...!!