If Music Be The Food Of Life, Play On
Music soothes the savage beast — or breast.
The first recorded music was on April 9, 1860. Not that long ago in relation to the amount of time that humans in some form or other have been around on this planet. According to historical records, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville first recorded a clip of the French folk song “Au Clair de la Lune.”in 1860. This first recorded sound would thus fall sometime between the early experiments in recording the human voice and the recognizable “Au Clair de la Lune” song.
The musical melody, “Hurrian Hymn №6” is considered the world’s earliest complete piece. However, the oldest musical composition is the AD Greek tune known as the “Seikilos Epitaph.” It is the earliest known piece of music to have survived in full from the first century. The song was found engraved on a woman’s gravesite in ancient Turkey alongside a marble column.
Given that early humans had no means of writing, it is quite possible musical tunes were being created some millions of years ago by many of our different ancestor groups.
So how did music begin? What types of instruments did they use? Did our early ancestors first start by using their voices to sing? I would have to presume that pursing the lips and whistling was one of the first musical “instruments.” That…
