Music During The Preliterate Age Essay

Prehistoric Music can be categorized as music that was created during the preliterate era which is a period before cultures had created a system of reading or writing. Due to its creation being before recorded history, the origin of music is still truly unknown. Despite this, experts believe that music was created from the sounds and rhythms of nature. Thus, humans learned to implement these sounds of nature into their music. Music during the preliterate age was inherently simple as it had no written form or concrete musical structure. So, there were no scales, harmonies or musical notation but mainly simple sounds. It is widely believed that ancient societies used music as a tool in order to help descendants remember oral stories and

Charles Darwin is one of the believers although this is a highly debated topic. After the Preliterate Age came to an end, the Ancient Music Era (1200 BC – 500BC) began. During this period, especially within Greek and Roman societies, music was very popular as musical theory had been established. In addition, the recording and notation of music was created during this time. Even the philosopher Plato, in 400 BC was interested in the way music could affect human character and emotion. He was particularly intrigued in the way music could degrade or elevate the minds of young people. The first ever written song can be traced back 4,000 years ago in the ancient city known as Ugarit which is located in Northern Syria. It is thought to have been written even before the creation of the city in an ancient language known as cuneiform. Once deciphered, the music seemed to have been written in harmonies of thirds and composed using the Pythagorean tuning system. This system consists of intervals having the frequency ratio 3:2 which is thought to be the easiest to tune by ear and the most pleasant