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Do we know what ancient music sound like ?


Sumerian music had a notation, a bit of which was recovered. Interpretation is however difficult and not yet agreed upon.

https://openculture.com/2014/07/the-oldest-song-in-the-world...


A little older than sibling comment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikilos_epitaph


I believe it is still quite a hard thing to be truly certain of but there are some indications around. Harmonia Mundi produced an album a few years ago that included some ancient Greek music [1].

[1] La Musique De L'Antiquité https://www.discogs.com/Various-La-Musique-De-LAntiquit%C3%A...


There is an audiobook called How to Listen to and Understand Great Music. The author starts way way back with the oldest music we have and then little by little moves forward to more modern times showing how music grew little by little over the millennia. The audiobooks includes audio excerpts of the music. I found it fascinating up until the classical music time when it started bogging down and going a lot slower.


Flutes retain their tonal function despite age. Bone flutes from times past exist.

Flinders Petrie museum in UCL (London) has some stuff on ancient music I think.

The Taipei National Palace Museum collection includes bronze tuned bells (gongs? cymbals?)


We have the notation for a small amount of Hellenistic and Roman era music, and I think a tiny little bit of Euripides. We'll never know what Sappho sounded like, though.


Yes, actually. Here's one example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ


Will Astley ever get old?




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