The oldest music in the world
I got two similar questions -- "What is the oldest composition I know of," and "What is the earliest form of music and which civilization was the first to use it as a form of entertainment?" Unfortunately, both of these questions are difficult to answer, because of the ephemeral nature of music and the inevitable decay of time.
I'll tell you about historical records of music and then try to give you some specific examples. When you see a link, click on it to have a musical example opened in a new tab.
Studies in prehistoric and ancient music are fascinating but sadly inconclusive, just by virtue of "ancient times" being so damn long ago. Apparently, there are wall carvings from the 4th dynasty of Egypt (c. 2700 BCE) that depict a person using hand signs to give musical cues (cheironomy). These signs and their accompanying hieroglyphics are the earliest known record of any kind of musical notation, but we cannot interpret them into actual musical sound. There are clues that particular hand signs might represent particular notes or intervals, but we have no actual music, only these depictions of acts.
The earliest surviving written notation comes from Mesopotamia, from the 2nd millennium BCE. Rather than using symbols to represent musical sound, this notation is roughly equivalent to writing out music with note names. (e.g. "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" is C-C-G-G-A-A-G.) But, we do not have musical works; these surviving tablet fragments only describe how to create scales. Around the same time as Egypt and Mesopotamia, China developed its own phonetic form of notation (using ideographs for note names, as in Chinese language). The oldest record of this notation comes from the 2nd millennium BCE, but references to it exist from the 4th millennium. Which end of Asia did it first?
Notation using letters as note names continued to develop throughout ancient civilizations. The theme, as you'll note, is that we only have evidence of scales and intervals. Does this mean they didn't write musical pieces down, or that we just don't have it? Such an extremely minute percentage of all historical documents survive, there is no way to be sure. It seems to be the case, however, that music generally was not written down. The cuneiform tablets, for example, include hymn texts alongside guides to scales and intervals. At the time, it was probably just common knowledge how the hymn could have been sung, and the scale was meant to guide a musician in accompanying the hymn.
So! We can say that the earliest recorded music is around 4000 years old, we just can't pick it up and play it on the family piano. (The idea of the musical object, that exists fixed as one person's sacred intellectual property, is an incredibly recent idea, so don't look for it yet.) Music itself is, of course, as old as homo sapiens. The oldest surviving bone flute is 25,000 years old, and people had voices long before they invented tools, so clearly, folks have been making music for a very long time.
Was the music strictly for ritual or communication, or for entertainment? It's impossible to say--early humans wrote no letters to the future--but I would speculate that ancient people made no real distinction. Church chant serves a practical purpose, aiding memory of liturgy and encouraging spiritual focus, but it is also enjoyed and appreciated as an object of beauty. (Medieval clerics wrote extensively about the virtues of music.) A community's spiritual life has also, often, been its social life. Festivals derive from religious observations. Who is to say where functionality ends and pure entertainment begins?
So far, music throughout the world was always--as far as we can tell--memorized or improvised. The written records are not art, but educational tools. But at some point, we obviously started writing our music down. From here on, I can only speak about Western music. Musical notation was developed in order to standardize and unify church practice as the Western empire grew. As such, the earliest surviving works are plainchants used in liturgy. (All sacred music is liturgical until approximately the 13th century. Then, the music of the liturgy begins to take on life as art music, in a genre called motet. Motets could be performed during a mass but also existed outside of it.)
References to notation exist from the 8th century, and our first examples of figurative notation (as opposed to phonetic) exist from the 9th. This notation uses a system of neumes, which are squiggles over words that approximate pitch and duration. (Shown left.) These squiggles were gradually refined into square shaped notes located on a staff, so music in this square notation is the earliest that can be performed with any real certainty as to intended pitch. (Shown below.)
Although church music is the earliest we have, written secular music emerges around the same time as square notation. All of the earliest written secular music comes from the Troubadour traditions, which began around the 12th century. Written copies of their music appear in the 13th. Troubadour songs are most famously about courtly love, but they reflect many aspects of court life (as Troubadours were always noblemen--or women!). Some Troubadours wrote about their professional relationships with their patrons, some wrote songs about their experiences in the crusades, and so on. At this time, we also encounter the first secular musical drama, Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, by renowned trouvere Adam de la Halle. (I have to caution that the recording in the link is quite dated, with an extremely Orientalist interpretation, but it's fun. Skip ahead to 5:15.) This is a satirical pastourelle, so as such, its songs have a folksy character that possibly reflects the popular music of the time. (Two of its songs, "Robin m'aime" and "He, resvelle toi Robin," were quite famous in their day!)
We often wonder why people suddenly decided to start recording their music. Although there are 13th century sources, they become much more common in the 14th. Sometimes it's suggested that the Black Death inspired people to start keeping better records, to stop being reliant on oral transmission. I think the answer is likely much more simple: the 14th century is when the technology became practical. (Think of it as roughly analogous to the internet in the 80s versus in the 90s.)
Although I've focused on Western church music, it's important to bear in mind that they did not have notation locked away in the Ark somewhere, hidden from the rest of the world. The Eastern empire and also the Germanic "barbarians" used similar notation, and they were all in contact, trading musical ideas.
So to sum up, it seems safe to say that music is as old as humanity, and it has always filled a variety of purposes. There seems to always have been a division between sacred music and folk music, and what typically survives in written form is the sacred music. People started thinking about writing it down at least 4000 years ago, but we can't find any real pieces of music until about 1000 years ago (at least, in the West--the Chinese were as much as a millennium ahead of us there.) But thanks to whatever motivated court culture in the high Middle Ages and the development of more precise notation, we finally get some secular art music in the 12th-13th centuries. (Folk music remained largely unpreserved.) I wish I could tell you more about what went on in the rest of the world, but I don't yet know. Perhaps this can be a topic for us to explore together in the future.
I'll leave you with one of my favorite pieces of way early music, which happens to be one of the most famous. This is the Viderunt omnes from the Magnus liber organi (which you saw a snippet of in the example of square notation). This manuscript is, incidentally, one of the first in Western history that can be linked to named individuals, Leonin (who is credited with the 1-2 voice works) and Perotin (the later 3-4 voice ones). The music is organum, which is polyphonic chant. I love the contrast of free chant sections with the rhythmic clausula. So here you have some of the first polyphony from the "first" composers!
I'll tell you about historical records of music and then try to give you some specific examples. When you see a link, click on it to have a musical example opened in a new tab.
Studies in prehistoric and ancient music are fascinating but sadly inconclusive, just by virtue of "ancient times" being so damn long ago. Apparently, there are wall carvings from the 4th dynasty of Egypt (c. 2700 BCE) that depict a person using hand signs to give musical cues (cheironomy). These signs and their accompanying hieroglyphics are the earliest known record of any kind of musical notation, but we cannot interpret them into actual musical sound. There are clues that particular hand signs might represent particular notes or intervals, but we have no actual music, only these depictions of acts.
The earliest surviving written notation comes from Mesopotamia, from the 2nd millennium BCE. Rather than using symbols to represent musical sound, this notation is roughly equivalent to writing out music with note names. (e.g. "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" is C-C-G-G-A-A-G.) But, we do not have musical works; these surviving tablet fragments only describe how to create scales. Around the same time as Egypt and Mesopotamia, China developed its own phonetic form of notation (using ideographs for note names, as in Chinese language). The oldest record of this notation comes from the 2nd millennium BCE, but references to it exist from the 4th millennium. Which end of Asia did it first?
Notation using letters as note names continued to develop throughout ancient civilizations. The theme, as you'll note, is that we only have evidence of scales and intervals. Does this mean they didn't write musical pieces down, or that we just don't have it? Such an extremely minute percentage of all historical documents survive, there is no way to be sure. It seems to be the case, however, that music generally was not written down. The cuneiform tablets, for example, include hymn texts alongside guides to scales and intervals. At the time, it was probably just common knowledge how the hymn could have been sung, and the scale was meant to guide a musician in accompanying the hymn.
So! We can say that the earliest recorded music is around 4000 years old, we just can't pick it up and play it on the family piano. (The idea of the musical object, that exists fixed as one person's sacred intellectual property, is an incredibly recent idea, so don't look for it yet.) Music itself is, of course, as old as homo sapiens. The oldest surviving bone flute is 25,000 years old, and people had voices long before they invented tools, so clearly, folks have been making music for a very long time.
Was the music strictly for ritual or communication, or for entertainment? It's impossible to say--early humans wrote no letters to the future--but I would speculate that ancient people made no real distinction. Church chant serves a practical purpose, aiding memory of liturgy and encouraging spiritual focus, but it is also enjoyed and appreciated as an object of beauty. (Medieval clerics wrote extensively about the virtues of music.) A community's spiritual life has also, often, been its social life. Festivals derive from religious observations. Who is to say where functionality ends and pure entertainment begins?
So far, music throughout the world was always--as far as we can tell--memorized or improvised. The written records are not art, but educational tools. But at some point, we obviously started writing our music down. From here on, I can only speak about Western music. Musical notation was developed in order to standardize and unify church practice as the Western empire grew. As such, the earliest surviving works are plainchants used in liturgy. (All sacred music is liturgical until approximately the 13th century. Then, the music of the liturgy begins to take on life as art music, in a genre called motet. Motets could be performed during a mass but also existed outside of it.)
References to notation exist from the 8th century, and our first examples of figurative notation (as opposed to phonetic) exist from the 9th. This notation uses a system of neumes, which are squiggles over words that approximate pitch and duration. (Shown left.) These squiggles were gradually refined into square shaped notes located on a staff, so music in this square notation is the earliest that can be performed with any real certainty as to intended pitch. (Shown below.)
Although church music is the earliest we have, written secular music emerges around the same time as square notation. All of the earliest written secular music comes from the Troubadour traditions, which began around the 12th century. Written copies of their music appear in the 13th. Troubadour songs are most famously about courtly love, but they reflect many aspects of court life (as Troubadours were always noblemen--or women!). Some Troubadours wrote about their professional relationships with their patrons, some wrote songs about their experiences in the crusades, and so on. At this time, we also encounter the first secular musical drama, Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, by renowned trouvere Adam de la Halle. (I have to caution that the recording in the link is quite dated, with an extremely Orientalist interpretation, but it's fun. Skip ahead to 5:15.) This is a satirical pastourelle, so as such, its songs have a folksy character that possibly reflects the popular music of the time. (Two of its songs, "Robin m'aime" and "He, resvelle toi Robin," were quite famous in their day!)
We often wonder why people suddenly decided to start recording their music. Although there are 13th century sources, they become much more common in the 14th. Sometimes it's suggested that the Black Death inspired people to start keeping better records, to stop being reliant on oral transmission. I think the answer is likely much more simple: the 14th century is when the technology became practical. (Think of it as roughly analogous to the internet in the 80s versus in the 90s.)
Although I've focused on Western church music, it's important to bear in mind that they did not have notation locked away in the Ark somewhere, hidden from the rest of the world. The Eastern empire and also the Germanic "barbarians" used similar notation, and they were all in contact, trading musical ideas.
So to sum up, it seems safe to say that music is as old as humanity, and it has always filled a variety of purposes. There seems to always have been a division between sacred music and folk music, and what typically survives in written form is the sacred music. People started thinking about writing it down at least 4000 years ago, but we can't find any real pieces of music until about 1000 years ago (at least, in the West--the Chinese were as much as a millennium ahead of us there.) But thanks to whatever motivated court culture in the high Middle Ages and the development of more precise notation, we finally get some secular art music in the 12th-13th centuries. (Folk music remained largely unpreserved.) I wish I could tell you more about what went on in the rest of the world, but I don't yet know. Perhaps this can be a topic for us to explore together in the future.
I'll leave you with one of my favorite pieces of way early music, which happens to be one of the most famous. This is the Viderunt omnes from the Magnus liber organi (which you saw a snippet of in the example of square notation). This manuscript is, incidentally, one of the first in Western history that can be linked to named individuals, Leonin (who is credited with the 1-2 voice works) and Perotin (the later 3-4 voice ones). The music is organum, which is polyphonic chant. I love the contrast of free chant sections with the rhythmic clausula. So here you have some of the first polyphony from the "first" composers!
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