A New Reconstruction of the Hurrian Hymn
© 2000 by Joe Monzo
(please wait for the mp3 audio file to download; it will play automatically)
From Yahoo Tuning Group,
message
11624 (Sat Aug 19, 2000 4:48 pm):
From: Joe Monzo
Troubledoor then gives the URLs containing interpretations by
M. L. West:
and A. D. Kilmer:
I'm stunned that someone else should post precisely these links
at this particular time at *my* favorite cyber-hangout, because
I've been very deeply involved in research into these matters
for the last two months.
I had prepared a post to the List exactly one month ago that
I never submitted, because the webpages to which I wanted to refer
are not yet ready and, indeed, I do not feel that I have yet
gathered enough evidence to support my speculations about these
documents, and in fact I'm not at all sure yet that my
interpretations are correct. In particular, my conception
of the basic scale may be totally wrong... but I'm accepting
it for now, until I dig more deeply.
To say that 'there is some controversy' about the proper
reconstruction of this piece is a vast understatement: since
the first recognition that this tablet contained musical content,
by H. G. Gu"terbock in 1970 (Revue d'Assyriologie), there have
been no less than 9 different attempts at reconstruction, varying
wildly:
1971 David Wulstan
The latest account, Dumbrill's _The Musicology and Organology
of the Ancient Near East_ (Green Press, London, 1998) is by far
the most in-depth examination of the entire subject, at almost
700 pages. He provides generous samples of the book on his site:
Unfortunately, since it's $140, I don't think I'll be able to
read the rest of the book until I can find it in a library, and
again unfortunately, even tho I've been searching far and wide,
I haven't yet found it anywhere.
I found Dumbrill's reconstruction to be the most musical of them
all so far, and based my original idea on his. Then I became
convinced, along with some of the scholars trashed by Dumbrill,
that the Babylonian tablet CBS 10996 was really defining *harmonic*
and not melodic intervals. So I made 2 other reconstructions,
based on 2 different basic scales. The one in the link below
is the latest.
> [Troubledoor]
In fact, there's no doubt at all in my mind that the 12-tone
so-called 'Pythagorean' scale was invented by the Sumerians
*at least* 1400 years before Pythagoras lived! (... if, in
fact, it was not invented even earlier by another culture.) There exists
substantial proof for this: the earliest Babylonian musical
tablet which we've found surviving so far (CBS 10996) provides
a clear recognition of the complete 'cylce of 5ths' and 12
different modes or tunings could be achieved by raising or
lowering the tritone, and thus shifting the position of
the tritone in the new scale. King Shulgi of Ur may have
been the first person to have recorded this scale; he boasts
of having discovered what seems to be this tuning method.
And as I stated above, I also agree that notes were played
simultaneously to produce harmony.
The Sumerians may have even figured out how to tune *12-tET*
as long ago as c. 2500-2000 BC! But I still have much more
research to do before being able to present a good case for this.
There is absolute proof that they knew how to arrive at
arbitrarily close approximations of the square-root of 2
(tablet YBC 7289), which could have been of use in calculating
12-tET.
And there is also proof that they limited their cycle of
modes to 12. This may be a clue that the scale was tempered,
because assuming Pythagorean tuning, the 12th raising or lowering
of the tritone would give a scale identical to the starting one,
except that it would be a semitone higher or lower (respectively)
than the original. Tempering the scale would remove that
problem. The CBS 10996 tablet also seems to give a tuning
procedure which provides a way of checking intervals in more
than one way, perhaps to assist in tempering by ear.
Ernest McClain (first in _The Myth of Invariance_, and in more
depth in _The Pythagorean Plato_) makes a case for the Greeks
having calculated 12-tET, and of course I think it can be shown
that, just as the Babylonians took over the Sumerian culture
as their own, much of the Greek music-theory, science, math,
mythology, etc., was taken from the Babylonians and thus goes
back to Sumerian roots.
I've been doing a lot of research into the Bible too, and can
see that a lot of ancient Hebrew writings are also based on
Sumerian originals. I have a *lot* more to say about this,
but it's off-topic... But anyway, Dr. Ewald Metzler, who
purports to have reconstructed the original tablets of the
10 Commandments, also sees evidence of ancient Hebrew music-
theory in its dimensions:
And see this webpage concerning
the possibility of Sumerian 12-tET:
As for this Hurrian hymn being the oldest existing musical score,
I don't think it is. The CBS 10996 tablet is older, and I believe
that *it* is the oldest score. More on that below...
I will have *much*, much more to come on this during the rest of
this year. The post on which I was working follows below:
------- post drafted a month ago, never submitted: ------
Hey folks, big news (to me, at least):
In my quest to unravel the history of tuning and music-theory,
I'm convinced that I've correctly deciphered the fundamental
basics of Sumerian music-theory, and thus have traced my
history back to its ultimate beginning.
Because the Sumerians were the first culture to invent
writing itself (c. 3200 BC), we will not find a written
music-theory older than this.
The oldest evidence is actually preserved on tablets inscribed
during the 'Old Babylonian' period (roughly 2000-1600 BC),
just after Sumerian died out as a spoken language and the
inhabitants of Mesopotamia became exclusively Semitic-speaking
(Akkadian). But these Babylonians preserved intact for
over 1500 years just about everything in Sumerian culture,
including their music-theory and the written Sumerian language
(and religion, and science, and math, and architecture,
etc., etc...).
Because of this decipherment, I've also reconstructed H6,
the only surviving more-or-less complete Hurrian hymn
(excavated at Ras-as-Shamra, Syria), which has so far
been thought to be the oldest musical score yet found
(c. 1400-1200 BC). I believe my reconstruction to be
more correct than any of the 9 or so others that have been
made. The mp3 audio file and score of it are given above.
And I qualified the status of this text with 'so far'
because I also believe that the notorious Old Babylonian
tablet describing the intervals on the lyre (CBS 10996,
a collection of math problems for use in schools, now
in the University Museum in Philadelphia) is not just
a 'text' for studying, but is actually a score to a
sort of etude, for learning the primary intervals of
'5ths/4ths' and '3rds/6ths' as they progress around
the 'circle of 5ths', and as the whole series progresses
thru the series of modal retunings - a sort of 'Hanon
exercise' for a budding young Sumerian lyrist:
This tablet dates from before 1600 BC, making *it* the
oldest musical score in existence. Admittedly not a
very interesting 'piece' (whereas the Hurrian hymn in
my reconstruction sounds - to me - emotionally powerful),
but still not bad.
(How ironic that I've lived in Philadelphia all these years,
and in fact spent a great deal of last year right on the
Penn campus where this tablet lives, without ever having
taken a look, and am now searching far and wide in California
for any copy of it I can find in any book, without success!...)
I won't say anything more technical right now, as I have
yet to write the paper putting all of this together.
There's already been a vast literature on this subject,
(since the first article in 1960), and I think it's important
to trace the history of the interpretation of these tablets
before I present my own work on them.
Right away while working on the Hurrian hymn, I got the idea
of having it performed on one of Johnny Reinhard's AFMM
concerts. And since (AFAIK) the Hurrian language hasn't
been decoded yet, I thought of Sasha Bogdanowitsch doing
the vocal part. How 'bout it, guys?....
-monz
See my Speculations
on Sumerian Tuning, my
letter to
Jacky Ligon and my webpage
about the nefilim
for some of my more unusual speculations about the Sumerians.
Also see my posts the the Yahoo Tuning Group in
message 10930 (Mon Jun 26, 2000 11:12 pm),
the footnote to
message 11107 (Sat Jul 8, 2000 9:28 pm),
and
message 11624 (Sat Aug 19, 2000 4:48 pm)
for more on Sumerian and Babylonian music.
Date: Sat Aug 19, 2000 9:48am
Subject: the oldest musical score
> [Troubledoor, Fri Aug 18, 2000 6:55pm]
>
> In Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra) in Syria, an ancient tablet was
> discovered in the 1950s dating back to 1400 BC. The oldest known
> musical score, it takes the form of interval names and number
> signs, and even has lyrics. The text is identified as a hymn
> to the moon goddess Nikkal.
>
> There is some controversy among ancient musicologists over the
> proper interpretation of the notes, but all agree that it is a
> genuine musical score.
http://members.aol.com/jazzdd/index.htm/westhuri.htm
http://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/EVIDENCE.HTM
1974 A. D. Kilmer
1976 M. Duchesne-Guillemin
1977, 1978 Thiel
1982 Raoul Vitale
1982 M. Duchesne-Guillemin
1988 Cerny
1993 M. L. West
1998 R. J. Dumbrill
http://members.aol.com/ricdum/mane.htm
>
> The find was especially interesting because it overturned
> conventional views of ancient music, showing that the diatonic
> (7-note) scale and musical harmony were in use more than a
> thousand years earlier than was thought.
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/7353/dr_ed09e.htm
http://sonic-arts.org/monzo/sumerian/sumeriantuning.htm
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/babylonian/cbs10996.mid
Updated:
2001.6.11
By Joe Monzo
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