Week 3 -- The Sumarians Approach

This week I was hoping to write on my experiences at the Divine Liturgy and discuss them within the framework of structure.  Alas, last night, my wife asked me if I was familiar with the "oldest song in the world."  I was not, but her academia friends had been passing around a link from the Open Culture website about it.  I am not familiar with the site, nor do I have the ability to comment on its authenticity, however, I was fascinated by the implications for our coursework.  Serendipity being something I believe in over coincidence, I thought I'd use this for our blog this week.  

The .MIDI track is relatively boring and dry, and gives us a limited sense of the rhythm, etc. It also gives us no sense of improvisation, structure, and rhythmic cohesion.  One of my observations of Liturgical Chant, and this is within the scope of the Divine Liturgy, the so-called "Tridentine Mass" (now titled by Pope Benedict XVI as the "extra-ordinary form"), and even the Islam Koran recitations we've been quizzed on is that the rhythms and pitch changes are dictated more by the text than by the printed notes.  The length of the half-note in relationship to the quarter is informed by the rhythmic relationship, but then it is executed by the words in the text, the meaning of the syllables, and the pronunciations as well.  I became more keenly aware of this when participating in the Divine Liturgy in Church Slavonic last weekend for my field work project as Lord Have Mercy is sung very differently than Hóspodi pomíluj even though they use the same musical score.

This is supposedly a more musically accurate performance of the Sumarian hymn, although, again it lacks text to inform the structure.  I find no scholarship that indicates whether or not there actually is text to be sung, however, every indication is there.  There does appear to be some sort of improvisational section in the rendition, and they do seem to conform to our text's assertion that they are composition within a structured architecture and not something completely free composed.  

So, on to the particulars that I should have started with: 

Title: Hurrian Hymn No. 6

Performers: Anne Draffkorn Kilmer and Richard Crocker

Origin: Ancient Sumaria

Instrumentation: .MIDI (first) and Lyre (second)