Just as early humans created art through cave paintings and pottery, music has also served as a universal form of expression since ancient times. We’ll likely never get to hear the many songs that have been lost to history, but fortunately, there’s one remarkable piece of music from around 1,400 BCE that was preserved on clay tablets over 3,400 years ago. Known as the world’s oldest playable song, the “Hurrian Hymn No. 6” was discovered by archaeologists in the 1950s among the ruins of the ancient city of Ugarit, in what is now modern-day Syria.
The tablets are inscribed in the Hurrian language using Sumerian cuneiform script and include both the lyrics and the musical notes of the Hurrian Hymn. However, no one knows for sure how exactly the song is supposed to sound, since the instructions don’t detail the precise length and pitch of the notes, like modern sheet music does. The tablets have been studied extensively by scholars, leading to several theories about how the music should be interpreted. However, there’s one version that seems to be the most convincing.
Canadian musician Peter Pringle recreated “Hurrian Hymn No. 6” based on the interpretation of archaeomusicologist Dr. Richard J. Dumbrill. In the video above, he plays the song using a long-necked lute, which is like a cross between the Turkish baglama and the Persian setar. “I made this instrument myself as an experiment,” reveals Pringle. “It has four strings but the bass notes are a double course. It is tuned F-C-F. Lutes of this type have been played since the most ancient times throughout Mesopotamia and Anatolia.”
Pringle also sampled ancient pipes and included their sounds in a backing track. “The pipes you hear are replicas of the 5,000-year-old silver pipes discovered in the Sumerian city of Ur in the 1920s,” he explains. “These are reed instruments but since I cannot play wind instruments and sing at the same time, I sampled the pipes and I am playing them by means of a pedal keyboard, similar to the kind of pedalboard used by organists.
“My left foot controls the lower register pipe, and my right foot the higher register.” Pringle adds, “Players of these instruments used the technique known as ‘circular breathing,’ which is still used today for wind instruments like the Armenian duduk, and the Australian didgeridoo.”
Scholars believe “Hurrian Hymn No. 6” was dedicated to Nikkal, the goddess of orchards and fertility in the ancient Near East. Pringle’s mesmerizing performance of the world’s oldest known song offers a powerful glimpse into a forgotten world from thousands of years ago.
Listen to Pringle’s version of the world’s oldest recorded song in the video above.
Peter Pringle: YouTube
Source: THE OLDEST SONG IN THE WORLD
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