“If I cannot fly, let me sing.” -composer Stephen Sondheim

our second lesson – what music would you send to outer space?

and will music die with AI?

Anthems are designed to change the world by their very nature. How?

Cities have anthems, and songs that are too good to miss…

So what is music?

How do we define it?

Is it sound with meaning?

Sound with feeling?

Sound with both meaning and feeling?

Do you have to hear it for it to be music?

Music has been around a long time before we were.

Nature – 4.5 billion years?

Crickets 200-250 million years

Frogs and mammals 100-200 million years, maybe earlier

birds about 70 million

How did we ‘learn to make it?’

anatomy – maybe one million

flutes, etc. – about 40,000

What are the ancient songs?

Man walking on two? a million years ago?

What are the important songs?

What songs would you send into outer space?

Is music created by AI going to ruin humanity

Is it just us humans, maybe whales too? And other animals?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Humpbackwhale2.ogg

Did it all start with a march?

And isn’t it ironic that these primates don’t have what it really takes to ‘be like us’ – music (and not fire)? Except in a Disney movie, of course….

And what is the hypnotic spell it casts over us?

And how the music in us helps brings us ‘back home’

Our primitive music goes back a long time, on the human scale.

What if we are musical beings, down to our core? That’s what Prof. Michael Spitzer thinks.

Is this us? The Human Experience?

Spitzer, Michael. The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth – A BBC Radio 4 ‘Book of the Week’ (p. 138). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

paleolithic flute, about 30-40,000 years old

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Didgeridoos trace back about 1500 years, although Aboriginal singing tradition may go back over 10,000 years.

https://michaellevy.bandcamp.com/track/hurrian-hymn-text-h6-c-1400-bce-performed-in-the-just-intonation-of-antiquity?utm_source=chatgpt.com

• Oldest written/notated music (substantially complete): the Hurrian Hymn No. 6 from Ugarit (modern Syria), c. 1400 BCE—lyrics with musical instructions on a clay tablet. Wikipedia+1

Tradition of singing going back some three thousand years, before the Greeks began to write down their stories, they sang them .

While you live, shine,
Have no grief at all;
Life exists only for a short while,
And time demands its due.

Seikilos Epitaph

• Oldest complete composition with notation: the Seikilos epitaph (Ancient Greek), 1st–2nd century CE, inscribed on a marble stele

early Christian hymn 3rd century CE

Gregorian chants

Is the Torah the ‘longest song around?’