The Fine Art of Listening

Today we’re going old school. And I’m talking serious old school – as in, seriously old.

The Seikilos Epitaph is the oldest surviving complete musical composition, dating somewhere between 200 BC to 100 AD. Certainly, humans were making music for at least 40,000 years, and writing it down for at least 4,000, but this is the most complete thing we’ve managed to find so far. Despite the fact that it’s a very short, simple song, there are some scholarly arguments about how it’s supposed to sound. The ancient Greeks used a variety of modes and tunings, but since they weren’t able to record sound, we can only take an educated guess at how it should sound.

Oddly fitting are the lyrics to this ancient piece – one can wonder what Seikilos would say if he knew his song was so famous 2,000 years later.

While you live, shine
have no grief at all
life exists only for a short while
and time demands an end.

Simply mention the hit video game Tetris to someone who has played it, and they will instantly think about the catchy music that accompanies the game. In this game, the player organizes blocks into (hopefully) organized stacks. The music of Johann Sebastian Bach is similar, in that he often takes a small musical idea (motif) and turns it into a building block out of which he builds an entire piece – much like building a house entirely out of tiny Legos.

Anyone who has played Tetris knows the main theme music (Music A), but for those more adventurous types who chose the B or C music, you might recognize the Minuet (jump to 11:35) from Bach’s French Suite in b minor. Many of the movements of this suite are built on small motivic ideas, which, when stacked correctly on top of each other, can create magnificent structures.

Ugh, the stress, the confusion, the emotional rollercoaster of paying taxes. Well, it’s over now – how about something uplifting to get us out of the grave?

On one hand, I feel bad for Johann Nepomuk Hummel, because he is only remembered for one piece – his Trumpet Concerto. On the other hand, it’s not so bad to have your name forever engraved in the annals of history, even if it’s for a single composition. Anyway, despite a large output of music, he is a classical one-hit wonder.

Perhaps what makes this concerto so popular is its place in history. Before Hummel’s time, trumpets didn’t have keys, and tended to play either extremely difficult, sky-high parts, or dull notes that merely added “punctuation” to orchestral music. The 19th century saw an outpouring of new and improved instruments, one of which was the keyed trumpet (holes in the trumpet, like a clarinet or flute – very different from valves, which is what we consider normal for a trumpet these days.) Hummel’s concerto could not have been played on an instrument without valves or keys, so in a sense, it’s the earliest piece of its kind, and the closest thing to Beethoven or Mozart that trumpet players can play. Eventually the keyed trumpet disappeared because the valved trumpet was far superior. The concerto is brilliant and virtuosic, and began a new chapter in the history of the instrument (and the whole brass family, for that matter).