Play the World's Oldest Song

by Howard Fosdick © FolkFluteWorld.com

Want to play the oldest song in the world? You've come to the right place. We'll provide the sheet music and the stories behind world's earliest songs.

Of course, deciding which is the world's oldest song gets a little complicated if you take the competition seriously. For example, a melody or tune is musical phrasing with notes and timing.

A song is usually considered to be more complete. For example, it might combine a medody with lyrics, or a melody with harmony or other accompanying parts.

And then there is the question of how much of a song must be extant to consider it the world's oldest. Many early tunes exist only in fragments or partial preservation. Yikes.

We'll steer clear of all those complexities. Let's just have some fun with the world's oldest "songs," however one defines them.

So, here are six ancient songs you can play...

"Hurrian Hymn to Nikkal" -- 1,400 BC

Here's a hymn -- a religious song of praise -- considered by many to be the oldest known song preserved in its entirety.

Usually it's called the Hurrian Hymn to Nikkal. It praises Nikkal, the Semitic goddess of orchards. It dates from around 1,400 BC, so it's about 3,400 years old.

The song was discovered encoded into stone tablets in the ancient city of Ugarit. That's part of Syria today, as this map shows.

Okay, here's your sheet music:

As you can see, the song was encoded in cuneiform on clay tablets. Modern western musical notation didn't evolve until around 1,000 AD. The Hurrian hymn was one of 36 on the tablets, many of which were broken.

Here's a translation of the song into a modern score. It is believed that the top line was for the lyrics, while the bottom line was for a plucked lyre:

There are many interpretations of this song, due to the complexities of the Hurrian language, Sumerian cuneiform script, and the fact that many tablets were damaged or broken.

Click here to hear an interpretation of the song based on the work of archaeomusicologist Richard J. Dumbrill.

Click here for another rendering.

"The Seikilos Epitaph" -- 100 AD

While the Hurrian hymns are older, they aren't fully preserved and are subject to varied interpretations. The Seikilos Epitaph is the oldest surviving complete musical composition.

Archaelogists are certain they have the entire song because it was engraved on a marble stele. This was a kind of funeral marker used by the ancient Greeks. The song was written by a Greek named Seikilos either in dedication to his wife or in honor of a musical goddess. It dates from about 100 AD.

The stele contains both a melody and accompanying lyrics. Unlike the Hurrian tablets, interpretation is pretty straightforward for this song.

To hear the song, click here:

This version starts with solo lyre, and then evolves to a folk flute plus lyre duet.

Here's the sheet music:

Here are the lyrics for this song:

It's truly remarkable that lyrics of such deep poignancy have survived for two thousand years.

Of course, the original lyrics are in ancient Greek, so the English syllables don't precisely match the notes in the tune.

And the words differ in various translations from ancient Greek to modern English.

Other words on the stele explain its existence: "I am a tombstone, an image. Seikilos placed me here as a long-lasting sign of deathless remembrance."

"Sumer Is Icumen In" -- 1200s

Sumer Is Icumen In translates to The Summer Arrives. Also known as The Summer Cannon or The Cuckoo Song, it is generally considered the oldest English song. It dates back to the 13th century.

The oldest written copy of the song was found in Reading Abbey and dates to between 1261 and 1264.

The song is in the form of a round. Its lyrics have been preserved, but since they're in Middle English, they must be translated for modern readers.

Here's a rendition of the song by the group The English Singers:

And here is one of many sheet musical scores for this song that you can find on the web:

"Lumen Hilare" -- circa 300 AD

Our next song, Lumen Hilare (also known as Phos Hilaron), translates to "Bright Light." It's widely considered the oldest Christian hymn that is still sung today.

The song dates to the late 3rd or early 4th century. Of Greek origin, it was first scored in the Apostolic Constitutions. St. Basil the Great (329-379 AD) noted that the song was historic even in his day.

Here's the score:

"Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" -- Before 275 AD

Here's another early Christian hymn.

It was originally composed for the Divine Liturgy of St. James, likely in Greece in the 3rd century AD.

Churches that use this liturgy today, such as the Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholic churches, still sing this hymn.

A number of different poems and hymns have been modeled on this original song.

For example, composer Ralph Vaughn Williams adapted the lyrics to an old medieval French tune called Picardy.

This version is widely used by Christian churches of many dominations today.

You can view the sheet music for Picardy here.

"Jieshi Diao Youlan" -- 500s

Our final song is the oldest preserved song from China. Called Jieshi Diao Youlan, it dates back to the 6th century and was written specifically for the guqin. The gupin is a traditional Chinese stringed instrument that has seven strings for plucking.

The photo provides a western translation of the score.

The original manuscript that contains the song is over 13 feet long! That boils down to about 10 pages of western notated sheet music.

We present only the first page of the score here. It is the work of John Thompson, guqin expert and translator.

You can find the rest of the score at his website here.

Conclusion

That wraps up our tour of some of the oldest known songs.

Play them on your folk flute and you reach back into the days when simple instruments ruled, and mechanized music loomed only in an unimaginably distant future.

Enjoy!

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