Musician Recreates Ancient Sumerian Music

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

These songs are examples of how art and science can come together to create something incredible. Musician Stef Conner learned to read several ancient Babylonian and Sumerian tablets written in cuneiform script, using historians' research to figure out likely pronunciation.

Conner is accompanied here by Andy Lowings, who recreates ancient instruments and plays a giant lyre that would have been used by the people who wrote these songs thousands of years ago.

Over at Newsweek, Douglas Main writes:

But how does one reincarnate music that no human voice has uttered for millennia? Conner says a key step was to really understand the language. She carefully studied historical analysis of the stresses and intonations of Babylonian and Sumerian for hints as to how it may have sounded, and researched how language is converted into music in similar Semitic languages. Then, after choosing and memorizing a piece of writing or poem, Conner collaborated with Lowings to create the melody.

Here are the tracks to listen to on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/newsweek-tech-science/sets/the-flood

Here is Conner's website and you can buy her albums on Itunes

http://www.stefconner.com/the-lyre-ensemble/

I think this is really cool and if you have an interest in music as I do than this is very fascinating. Just thinking about the fact that people could have been listening to something similar to this so long ago is staggering

 

[ThePhantasm]

Its interesting, but they really can only guess at the melody of the song, which could have been very different. An educated guess it may be, but just a guess all the same.

 

[childeroland]

Still, this seems pretty rad. Thanks for the heads-up.

 

[Grabes30]

I love music that comes from/sounds like it comes from the Ancient World. There's a cool Pandora channel called Ancient Voices, and another I like a little bit less called Ancient Winds. There's also a cool instrumental record from Maneki Neko called Auracle that I like a lot.