Let's talk music, no genre boundaries

For a variety of reasons, I won’t touch the more metaphysical/philosophical  thoughts shared and arguments posed by some of you fine gentlemen.  However, some thoughts about a couple of the more down to earth topics discussed:

While it is the opinion of some authorities that the “first” musical instrument was the flute, the 60,000 year old Slovenian “Neanderthal flute” being the prime example (proof?), there are other authorities that disagree and opine that, in fact, the first instrument was probably sticks or bones used as percussion instruments.  I agree with the latter.  The Neanderthal flute discovered in a cave in Slovenia is actually fairly sophisticated actually having tone holes that allow tones to be played whose relationship is diatonic.  A diatonic scale as used in most Western music.  That it was the first seems implausible to me.  Additionally, if one considers that rhythm, even more so than melody, is the prime essential element of music it follows that some sort of rhythm instrument, however primitive, was probably the first.

I took the  “Jazz pianist vs AI” test posted by Mahgister.  Interesting indeed!  I guessed correctly every time.  I bring this up not in search of any undue kudos or credit, but to bring up something I heard in the comparisons that was interesting in the context of this thread which is, after all, part of an audiophile forum.  One could point to the musical “looseness” (swagger as used in this thread) of the real Jazz pianist clips vs AI.  This did not surprise me at all.  What did surprise me was a certain timbral “tightness” in the sound of the AI clips, akin to what is claimed (heard) by some listeners in the perennial argument of “analog vs  digital”.  

I guess I have, in fact and without meaning to, ventured into the metaphysical realm, but it reaffirmed my feeling that as concerns the arts AI will ultimately only come so close, but as they say, “no cigar”.

Best to all.

The first musical instrument is our gesturing body...

Our body gesture on the members scale  and on the throat/mouth scale ...

 The two gesture are synchronized then as frogman said the rythm is fundamental...

The rythm is not merely something flowing in physical time but something creating his own time dimension...

The fist musical instrument is not physical object but body parts synchronising in something which is not speech as we know it now nor singing as we know it now in a separate way but the two as one...

Two feet and legs can synchronise with a bone sticking  etc 

 Speech and music  were conjoined twin never naturally separated but artificially separated by specialization... 

it is why poetry register made us conscious about the deep root of language in music ...

Prose register is only the peak of language iceberg...

 Methodologically Saussure advocated for the arbitrary of signs maxim , but he guessed that sounds in language are also motivated by  meaning  in his study about onomatopea...

Language is way less known than our science think it is...

The greatest linguist since Panini is not even translated in English by the way : Gustave Guillaume  which opuses goes near 30 volumes and more to come  in edition right now ... ( i studied it 35 years ago )

 In the same way acoustics  is a deep science which revolution  is ongoing right now...

but all this is out of topic here ...

@frogman 

I agree with you on all counts, especially AI versus human creativity. And thank you for the information on the 60,000-year-old Neanderthal flute, with a diatonic scale no less! I had either not heard of it or forgotten that I had heard about it. Perhaps the Neanderthals gave Homos sapiens the gift of music. So many of us seem to have a certain amount of Neanderthal DNA. It does not really matter, though, in regards to my main interest. Why was music and other arts created in a world where survival was of utmost importance. Why did humans need to create art. I think that question will lead to what @mahgister calls the spirituality in art.

I have watched over the years a TV series called "Closer to Truth." A trained neurologist (and it seems so much more) named Robert Lawrence Kuhn takes up a philosophical and scientific question for six 1/2-hour episodes. One question was about art and religion. I cannot remember the name of the institute he visited that studied art and religion. One of the researchers there said that in ancient humans--upper Paleolithic Homos sapiens--art and religion were the same. Those people made no distinction between the two.

It's probably clearer in the visual arts, since we have entire paintings and carvings from ancient times. In the book "The Mind in the Cave" by David Lewis-Williams, an archaeologist who has studied ancient caves, Lewis-Williams claims that these caves with early cave paintings were "churches." He has physical evidence to make these claims. He says that the animals drawn on these very early cave walls were not animals that were hunted for food. They were distant animals who were seen as "gods." It would take a thesis to explore this, so I'm just going to take it as fact for now. 

The point I want to make is that all art must have been extremely important to early humans or else they wouldn't have spent precious time normally used for survival creating and exploring art. I would say that if this argument is true, then early music, as well as the visual arts, would have been "spiritual" in some sense. And this is what we feel today, even those of us like myself who don't believe in traditional religion. And perhaps this is what @mahgister looks for when he talks about spirituality in music.

I think music, as well as all of the arts, have branched out into things other than just spirituality, such as entertainment. In the Greek Golden Age (beginning around the 7th century BCE) we find plays about the gods as well as humorous plays that must have been for entertainment. And, of course, most of the arts are for entertainment today, especially music. But when a piece of music does appeal to the "spiritual" many people can hear it and feel it. I have not yet listened to Phillip Glass's "Akhnaten, but I have heard other Phillip Glass pieces that have that spiritual quality. And, of course, in jazz we can hear pieces that entertain and others that appeal to a more spiritual aspect of humanity.

This is a topic I am much interested in.

You get me right and that makes me happy...

The point I want to make is that all art must have been extremely important to early humans or else they wouldn't have spent precious time normally used for survival creating and exploring art. I would say that if this argument is true, then early music, as well as the visual arts, would have been "spiritual" in some sense. And this is what we feel today, even those of us like myself who don't believe in traditional religion. And perhaps this is what @mahgister looks for when he talks about spirituality in music.

 Not only i means that , the oneness of art,religion, technology, but i must remind you the 5 articles i posted above about  universals in Timbre perception, and the musical time dimension created by man out of the physical linear time dimension  linked to the reason why human beat the Fourier principle or the Gabor limit...

I have not yet listened to Phillip Glass’s "Akhnaten, but I have heard other Phillip Glass pieces that have that spiritual quality. And, of course, in jazz we can hear pieces that entertain and others that appeal to a more spiritual aspect of humanity.

i felt that  Glass Akhnaten is  not just a beautiful piece of music...

We dont lack beautiful piece of music anyway...

 I was spell bounded by the way he succeeded to recreate something of the Ancient Egypt spiritually using rythms  and words in a way no modern opera never dare to go ...

I read about Egypt a masterpiece on the Luxor temple i paid 125 Canadian dollars in 1978 ... A fortune for a book if you use the inflation index but well worth it...

This book was an initiation to the deep symbolism of Egypt in two huge books... it gives even to me a key for mathematics understanding when i was young and in need of it...

Philip Glass genius shine through this spiritual opera  almost a kind of non christian  oratorio which is a "felt change in consciousness" (Barfield)   when listening to it...

 As an aside it is the piece of music i used,with the astonishing Lotte Lenya version of the three penny Opera of Weil to test my sound quality ( "out of the head" effect of my AKG K340 hybrid and his bass tones)  when i needed to do it ... ( i dont need to test anything  now  )