Re Hurrian Hymn, ancient music

While I've heard the Bit Enki rendition of the Hurrian Cult song, I'm
somewhat dubious of the transcription, mainly because it doesn't allow
single notes to be written, only dyads.

M.L. West has written a very good article on it in Music and Letters
around 1993 or 94 and offered a new transcription. The group "De
Organographia" in Oregon City, OR (USA) has performed it and the rest of
the Hurrian hymns on their CD "Music of the Ancient Sumerians, Egyptians
and Greeks." They use reconstructed instruments for the pieces. Since
most of the surviving Greek and Near Eastern music texts are
fragmentary, they've "repaired (sic) some of them with thematically
similar material, as they did for their earlier CD, "Music of the
Ancient Greek."

I've enjoyed their renditions very much, particularly those on the first
CD, though there is a bit too much reverb on the vocal parts sometimes
for my taste and the tempo is surprisingly fast in Mesomedes's hymns.

The tuning is basically pythagorean, even for the enharmonic passages
which have notes altered by approximate quarter-tones.

The Egyptian pieces are based on literary references and instrument
characters, not on notation. I'd be very interested in seeing the
publication of the Egyptian musical fragment and an interpretation of
its notation. There are also some later Coptic musical notations, but I
don't believe they are readable (Spud, you might know?).

As the rest of De Organographia's repertory is "early music," perhaps
Margo can comment better than I on their musicianship and interpretation.

--John