Antiquated Music

Sonic expressions have been tumbling out of humanity for a long time. We have archeological evidence that humans have been making music for fifty thousand years. There’s a museum in Vienna of renaissance & baroque instruments, called the Kunst Historisches Museum Wien. For instance, they have a lute-like instrument  with thirteen strings, including four un-fretted bass drone and three un-fretted high strings. Some of the most interesting instruments looked worn and folkish; I could picture them being played in a roadhouse, the music raw and ruckus. 

The museum was somewhat of a heartbreak because I wanted to hear some of this baroque bar music. As time aged my museum experience, it occurred to me that there’s an evolution to music, and like language, it’s handed down from one generation to the next. Remnants of this antiquated music are with us today in our music: fragmented shadows of the past.