billkilpatrick - 7-25-2005 at 12:58 AM
related to an earlier enqiry on original tuning, on the mandolin.cafe site someone mentioned "ur song" as being the so-called original song. there's
information on mesopotamia and the region of ur but nothing on "ur-song" per se.
anyone know anything about this?
sincerely - bill
al-Halabi - 7-25-2005 at 02:38 PM
I am not sure what this particular mention of "Ur song" refers to, but if you are interested in the music of Ur and the larger region in the ancient
period, a lot of fascinating informatiion is now available on the subject. Scholars have reconstructed many of the Mesopotamian instruments, including
lutes, and amazingly also the musical system and some melodies based on musical information recorded in ancient inscriptions. The two online
bibliographies below compile many of the findings on the music of the ancient Middle East. The scholar Anne Kilmer has perhaps done more than anyone
else to reconstruct ancient Mesopotamian music. She told me a few years ago that she did a recording of Mesopotamian melodies based on the cuneiform
inscriptions she had studied (I have not heard it).
http://faculty.washington.edu/snoegel/music.html
http://web.tiscali.it/ranesorg/Music.htm
Enjoy your trip to the ancient world.
billkilpatrick - 7-25-2005 at 06:24 PM
what's sumarian for "my dog has fleas?" ...
thank you again - bill
DJCrabtree - 7-27-2005 at 03:00 AM
Hi Bill,
It's difficult to be certain without seeing the context of this reference, but 'ur -' is often used as a prefix to suggest the oldest, the original,
the ancestor. - and has been since the discovery of Ur, the world's oldest city, in the 1920s. So 'ur-song' would be a shorthand for a conjectured
ancient form of music from which other forms have derived, but not necessarily the music of Ur itself. Nevertheless, what al-Halabi says is very
interesting.
There you go: my first post - for what it's worth - on this wonderful site.
I've been 'lurking' here since last November when I decided, recklessly perhaps, that my first stringed instrument should be an oud. The one I bought,
from an online traditional music store based in England, has all the problems you'd associate with a lower quality instrument - slipping pegs, high
action - and I've had so much comfort and gained so much insight from reading the posts from and to people in the same situation. You guys have saved
my sanity more than once. And how's it going now ? Well, you know how it is - such a voyage of discovery, and sometimes it's hard to know where you
are.
Anyway, hello from Northern Ireland, and thanks to Mike and everyone out there.
Greg - 7-27-2005 at 04:34 AM
Hello DJCrabtree,
Let me be the first to welcome your first contribution.
I can hardly welcome you to the forums because you've already been around for the past eight months (quietly 
).
Anyway, welcome aboard.
Regards,
Greg
DJCrabtree - 7-27-2005 at 05:38 AM
Thanks Greg - nice shades !
All the best
David
billkilpatrick - 7-27-2005 at 07:31 AM
for those interested, here's a site featuring three arrangements of the song in midi:
http://www.dfw.net/~amaranth/hurrian.htm
a search for "sumerian harp" will produce a photo of the harp on a smithsonian site.
i was hoping to find an original tuning, one related to the oud. i think, however, that it's impossible to know for sure what that tuning might be.
a tuning in straight 4ths is probably as accurate as it gets. most songs - in the american folk tradition (which is about as knowledgeable as i get -
and that ain't much) are sung in the key of "g" or "c." my guess is that the original tuning would reflect that unless "folks" from middle eastern
countries, hundreds of years ago, preferred to sing naturally in some other key.
sincerely - bill