Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

THE GUTI CALL

S

o. Lyres, harps, flutes and ratdes. My word, things were really flying. The Sumerians, though, were having a bit of a torrid time of it. From 2370?? onwards, they were conquered by just about anyone with a few hundred pounds and a good line in swords. Probably the most noteworthy conquerors were the Guti - which, although I have not an ounce of etymological evidence, I like to think was pronounced Gooti, to rhyme with 'booty'. The Guti were a band of mountain barbarians. It's always the way, isn't it? Everything is blamed on 'the barbarians'.

The other 'wave of incoming', as far as the Sumerians were concerned, were the Semitic Akkadians who, probably because of their rather complicated and?-conceived branding - well, I mean, Guti on one side and Semitic Akkadians on the other: I know which would test better in my focus group! - decided to adopt the Sumerian culture they had overthrown, rather than destroy it. Despite its brevity, this Guti/Akkadian period was great for music. Temples were built and, as the saying goes, where there's temples, there's music. In this instance, pipes were almost certainly 'in', as were bull's-horn trumpets which look, from contemporary carvings, extravagantly striking and impressive. Particularly if you are a bull.

After this point, the Sumerians hosted the biggest 'bring and die' party seen for some time. They were conquered, surmounted, reconquered, overcome, defeated, re-reconquered, multi-conquered, triumphed over and generally given a jolly good seeing-to. I think I've made my point. As I'm here, it might be worth just stopping off briefly to put the Babylonian kings under the spodight and, in particular, one of the most famous of their number, Hammurabi.

Two things have often occurred to me, on more than one occasion, and I think I should share them both with you. They botli concern 'the afterlife'. You see, I've often thought that, if there were to turn out to be such a place, then, firstly, it's going to feel something like a motorway service station. Don't know why: just think it would. I imagine it to have distinctive red-and-white branding, with a cute if slightly disembodied-looking mascot resembling a Fury, who gently beckons you to pull in and sample the plastic and largely overpriced post-death environment. I realize this is probably not everybody's view of the afterlife, but, well, you're never going to be able to prove me wrong, so SUE ME! The second, and let's face it more important, aspect of postmortem existence that has always struck me is that, despite the promise of infinity, I can't for the life-after-death of me see how I'm going to find time to get round to speaking to everyone with whom I'd want to have a jolly good chinwag. And this brings me back to Hammurabi. Apart from the obvious list of people and questions that you would have in any afterlife - you know, 'Ahh, Mr Einstein, can I interrupt your brunch a minute? I just wondered if I could go through this "E=mc2" thing again. Sorry - haven't quite got it. By the way, don't forget, you get a free refill with that coffee.' Well, apart from all the obvious ones, there's all the ones who you just didn't realize would be quite so interesting. And I think old I lammurabi falls into this bracket.