What is the earliest know composition in history?

Beyond a certain point in time, surely it would be very difficult to prove, wouldn't it?

ATB from George

from wikipedia :

The "oldest known song" was written in cuneiform, dating to 4,000 years ago from Ur. It was deciphered by Prof. Anne Draffkorn Kilmer (University of Calif. at Berkeley), and was demonstrated to be composed in harmonies of thirds, like ancient gymel (Kilmer, Crocker, Brown, Sounds from Silence, 1976, Bit Enki, Berkeley, Calif., LCC 76-16729), and also was written using a Pythagorean tuning of the diatonic scale.

from my collection :

David Munrow : Instruments of the Middle Ages and Renissance, Guillaume De Machaut (1300-1377) "Ballade Dame Se Vous M'Estes"

I thought it must be the Original Soundtrack from the movie : )

nah nymph - even further back...it was an amoeba record.....wait for it...

PD

Richard Thompson played a song by Richard the Lionheart (1157 -1199),I think it was.

quote:

Originally posted by kuma:
PD

I know...sorry...

quote:

Originally posted by mikeeschman:
The "oldest known song" was written in cuneiform, dating to 4,000 years ago from Ur.

Any vinyl?

It is claimed that the oldest written song with notation is 'Summer Is A Cummin In' in the remains of the old monastery in Reading ....

James H.

There is a quote from Sorabji which I can't quite remember but it is something like ...

"Don't call music immortal until it is as old as architecture which has been around for thousands of years. The pyramids are 5000 years old, Bach is just a few hundred"