I was deeply moved by Werner Herzog’s documentary, “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”, about the Chauvet cave paintings in southern France. Far older than the famous paintings of Lascaux, they display passion, reverence, and delight in the beauty of the animals they represent.
What is this drive to paint an image of the animals that share our world, in a sometimes high and dangerous place to reach? Why would the Palaeolithic people risk such heights? What moved them to express their vision of the world, and their place in it? Whatever the answer to these questions, It is apparent that this drive to create is something innately human. Many thousands of years later, we are still at it.
Despite the beautiful paintings, it was another section of the film that stayed with me most vividly. The ancient cave dwellers of Germany were not so prolific in their paintings (not that we have yet discovered), but they were makers of flutes. Who knows what other musical instruments they also had, that have not survived. The bone flutes remain, and one was carbon dated to 42-43000 years old, making it the oldest surviving musical instrument in the world. The flute was sufficiently intact for an assessment of its finger holes, and thus its tuning. This was exciting! We can see ancient cave paintings today, but what do we know about ancient music? The flute was tuned to….drum roll….the pentatonic scale, equivalent to the black notes on a piano.
It is perhaps no surprise. Music, at least on our planet and in our dimension, has it’s foundation in laws: laws of physics, laws of nature, laws of the universe. These sound waves and frequencies together produce harmonious and “pleasing” harmonies, and these, do not. The more dissonant intervals, such as augmented 4ths and major 7ths, are not invalid: they are spicy and delicious, like curry, or perhaps something sour like lime. But like all condiments, you can’t live on a diet of them. The foundational staples of music, the octave and the perfect 5th, are like the main course foods: they create a sense of resolution, of homecoming, of closure. They are warming and nutritious. They may also be the stable platform from which spicy dissonance may emerge, and then resolve and return.
Palaeolithic cave dwellers did not measure frequencies on sound wave machines, nor did they go to Conservatoriums. What is harmonious is obvious, at least, when you learn to listen. They made their little bone flutes to resonate with the tuning of the universe.
The Song of the Ancients 