JarlFrank
I like Thief THIS much
We even have this:
Ancient mesopotamian temple hymn preserved on cuneiform tablets. It took an archaeomusicalist a couple of years to properly read these things, and afaik the notation works kinda like guitar tabs nowadays, with each cuneiform sign corresponding to a string on the lute you're supposed to pluck. Of course some liberal interpretation of the existing source material is necessary when translating it into modern notation, but the source material exists and researchers found out how to read it, so we can emulate ancient music relatively accurately. It sounds very, very different from what modern ancient/medieval/fantasy music sounds like.
As for instruments, we also know pretty well which kinds of instruments existed in the past due to textual evidence, remains of actual instruments (as grave goods, for example) and artwork (stone reliefs, vase paintings, etc).
Check out this website for more detailed stuff on reconstructions of medieval music:
https://earlymusicmuse.com/
The guy running the site made a pretty great and accurate version of Miri it is:
Ancient mesopotamian temple hymn preserved on cuneiform tablets. It took an archaeomusicalist a couple of years to properly read these things, and afaik the notation works kinda like guitar tabs nowadays, with each cuneiform sign corresponding to a string on the lute you're supposed to pluck. Of course some liberal interpretation of the existing source material is necessary when translating it into modern notation, but the source material exists and researchers found out how to read it, so we can emulate ancient music relatively accurately. It sounds very, very different from what modern ancient/medieval/fantasy music sounds like.
As for instruments, we also know pretty well which kinds of instruments existed in the past due to textual evidence, remains of actual instruments (as grave goods, for example) and artwork (stone reliefs, vase paintings, etc).
Check out this website for more detailed stuff on reconstructions of medieval music:
https://earlymusicmuse.com/
The guy running the site made a pretty great and accurate version of Miri it is: