Music of Mesopotamia
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This article treats the music of Ancient Mesopotamia (see music and Ancient Mesopotamia). Ancient Mesopotamian culture was influenced by the Sumerians, about whom far less is known. The cultures of Ancient Mesopotamia were the first to develop writing, the first known Sumerian writing dating from the fourth millennium BC.
Cuneiform sources reveal an orderly organized system of diatonic scales, depending on the tuning of stringed instruments in alternating fifths and fourths. Whether this reflects all types of music we do not know. Besides "chords" (dyads, dichords) of fourths and fifths, thirds (and sixths) played also a considerable role. Of Mesopotamian rhythm, nothing is known.
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[edit] Instrumentation
Instruments of Ancient Mesopotamia include harps, lyres, lutes, reed pipes and drums. Many of these are shared with neighbouring cultures. Contemporary East African lyres and West African lutes preserve many features of Mesopotamian instruments. (van der Merwe 1989, p.10)
The vocal tone or timbre was probably similar to the pungently nasal sound of the narrow-bore reed pipes, and most likely shared the contemporary "typically" Asian vocal quality and techniques, including little dynamic changes and more graces, shakes, mordents, glides and microtonal inflections. Singers probably expressed intense and withdrawn emotion, as if listening to onself, as shown by the practice of cupping a hand to the ear (as is still current in many Arab and folk musics). (ibid, p.11)
[edit] See also
[edit] Sources
- Fink, Bob (2005) On the Origin of Music Section I, "Role of the Drone in Evolution of Harmony" Greenwich.
- Kilmer, A.D. (1971) The Discovery of an Ancient Mesopotamian Theory of Music. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 115, 131-149.
- van der Merwe, Peter (1989). Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-316121-4.
- Wellesz, Egon, ed. (1957) New Oxford History of Music Volume I: Ancient and Oriental Music. Oxford University Press.
- West, M.L. (1994) The Babylonian Musical Notation and the Hurrian Melodic Texts. Music and Letters 75, 161-179.
| Ancient music |
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Music of ancient Greece - Music of ancient Rome - Music of ancient Mesopotamia (Sumerian music) - Music of ancient Egypt - Pre-Columbian Maya music |
| Preceded by Prehistoric music | Succeeded by Early music |
