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New Day Cafe: the World's Oldest Known Song [1]

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Date: 2024-06-03  

Yesterday BBC 6 Radio introduced me to the Seikilos Epitaph, the oldest extant complete piece of music. It’s dated between First and Second CE, and in spite of its age, I think it’s quite lovely to modern ears.

Per Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/…

“The song — the melody of which is recorded, alongside its lyrics, in ancient Greek musical notation — was found engraved on a pillar (a stele) from the ancient Hellenistic town of Tralles, Turkey, in 1883. It is a Hellenistic Ionic song in either the Phrygian octave species or Iastian tonos. While older music with notation exists (for example the Hurrian songs), all of it is in fragments; the Seikilos epitaph is unique in that it is a complete, though short, composition.[2]

Although usually referred to as an epitaph, it is possible (according to a suggestion put forward by Armand D'Angour) that it does not mark a tomb, but was merely a monument erected by Seikilos himself to commemorate his skill.[3]”

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