Prehistoric flute in Germany is oldest known

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090624/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_prehistoric_flute

by aswanson • 17 years ago

11 16 17 years ago

news.yahoo.com

aswanson4• 17 years ago

Harmonie erst. (Our german mates will have to let me know if I am anywhere near grammatical correctness).

arrrg• 17 years ago

That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Sorry.

aswanson4• 17 years ago

Ah, well. It was an attempt at saying "Harmony first." Verdamung babelfish.

WilliamLP• 17 years ago

Geez, they don't even tell us what kind of scale it's tuned to?

msluyter2• 17 years ago

They played a couple of recreated samples on NPR. One sounded roughly pentatonic to me; the other sounded... of indeterminate scale and/or out of tune. It's hard to say exactly how it would have sounded, because the flute allows a lot of room for bending the pitch based on things like embouchure and whatnot (I'm a former flutist).

Check it out for yourself:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1058231...

aoeu3• 17 years ago

It may simply be in a different temperament or just/pure intonation rather than out of tune. I'm rather curious if anyone can work it out.

http://www.kylegann.com/microtonality.html

http://music.cwru.edu/duffin/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_temperament

aoeu3• 17 years ago

msluyter, do you know what flutes (and other wind instruments) are generally tuned to these days? I noticed some of my sister's clarinet music books show different fingerings for sharps and flats so presumably an extended meantone? Ta :-)

staunch• 17 years ago

Makes me wonder how it was invented. Directly, or maybe there were some incremental steps? Would I have invented a flute?

tokenadult• 17 years ago

HN submission of link to New York Times article on same archeological find, with perhaps some different details:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=672935

Prehistoric flute in Germany is oldest known

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