Stef Conner is a composer, performer and musicologist with interests straddling classical and folk genres. She is working with a group that recreated an ancient lyre and aims to reverse-engineer music of the 2nd millennium BC Are there any traces of Babylonian music, which hasn't been heard for over 3000 years? We have the text of lots of poems from ancient Mesopotamia, and it seems likely that some were originally songs of a sort. We have the words, but the music was either not written down or is lost. I thought it would be exciting if we could listen to these poems as they were meant to be heard. The reason I think we can do this is that the language of the poems - their stresses, intonation and rhythm - provides clues about musical style.
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