Found engraved on a tombstone (stele) in the Hellenistic town of Tralles near present-day Aydin, Turkey, the
Seikilos epitaph is the earliest surviving complete musical composition. The melody of the song is recorded in the
ancient Greek musical notation alongside the lyrics on the stele. "It is a
Hellenistic Ionic song in either the
Phrygian octave species or
Iastian tonos. While older music with notation exists (for example the
Hurrian songs), all of it is in fragments; the Seikilos epitaph is unique in that it is a complete, though short, composition" (Wikipedia article on Seikilos epitaph, accessed 11-2020).
The stele is preserved in the Department of Antiquites of the National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen.
Jeremy Norman’s
