Seikilos epitaph
Oldest surviving complete piece of music
Seikilos epitaph
The Seikilos epitaph is an Ancient Greek inscription that preserves the oldest surviving complete musical composition, including musical notation. Commonly dated between the 1st and 2nd century AD, the inscription was found engraved on a pillar (stele) from the ancient Greek town of Tralles (modern Aydın in present-day Turkey) in 1883. The stele includes two poems; an elegiac distich and a song with vocal notation signs above the words. A Hellenistic Ionic song, it is either in the Phrygian octave species or Ionian (Iastian) tonos. The melody of the song is recorded, alongside its lyrics, in ancient Greek musical notation. While older music with notation exists (e.g. the Hurrian songs or the Delphic Hymns), all of it is in fragments; the Seikilos epitaph is unique in that it is a complete, though short, composition. Based on its structure and language, the artifact is generally understood to have been an epitaph (a tombstone inscription) created by a man named Seikilos and possibly dedicated...
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