Re: the World's Oldest Love Song

Has anyone seen this page yet:
MIDI clip of the 3400 Syrian written harmony, with acc. in thirds.
http://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/evidence.htm

Robert

[Robert Walker wrote...]

>Has anyone seen this page yet:
>MIDI clip of the 3400 Syrian written harmony, with acc. in thirds.
>
>http://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/evidence.htm

Cool. While the arguments on this page are far from complete, I
would like to say that I never believed the theory that music was
strictly melodic prior to the Middle ages (or any other time, for
that matter). Since one person has sung, someone else has sung
along, and these singers would be drawn to just intonation as
singers today are. While the choice of the diatonic scale is almost
certainly due to its melodic properties, it has probably been used
harmonically since it has been used at all.

In general, new behaviors seem to appear in complex systems rather
all of a sudden. The idea that music slowly evolved in a hierarchical
way, over thousands of years, seems highly suspect to me -- typcial
(incorrect) 19th-century "classical" thinking.

-Carl