Music From The Edge Of Time: Palaeolithic Bone Flutes Of France & Germany – European Music Archaeology Project Volume 4
Volume 4 of EMAP‘s series of 5 albums of recordings, Music From The Edge Of Time, is now on sale, through record shops, at the EMAP exhibition and through online sources such as Dephian Records.
Around 40,000 years ago, towards the end of the last Ice Age, the upper Danube region was settled by anatomically modern humans. Traces of their daily life have been found at several cave sites in the south of modern Germany, including fragments of perforated bird bones and mammoth ivory. Representing the oldest evidence of musical creation worldwide, these prehistoric flutes – two from caves at Geissenklösterle, one from Hohle Fels, and a slightly later, more fully preserved find from Isturitz cave in the French Pyrenees – have been reconstructed in the modern era. Flautist Anna Friederike Potengowski has studied the instruments and their possible playing techniques, and together with percussionist Georg Wieland Wagner has created a compelling programme of music in which contemporary modes of expression absorb and are reshaped by echoes from the edge of time. Water splashing against rocks, rustling grasses, the eternal musical truth of breath on bone… The fourth volume in Delphian’s pioneering collaboration with the European Music Archaeology Project has the deepest roots – and the widest reach – yet.
The EMAP series is produced in association with the University of Huddersfield.
The EMAP series is produced in association with the University of Huddersfield.
Reviews:
There’s a special thrill in hearing the sound of an ancient instrument… The Edge of Time contains pieces and improvisations played on replicas of Paleolithic bone flutes – the oldest instruments in the world.
— Telegraph, April 2017
Treated with real imagination … worth exploring.
— Observer, April 2017
Speculative these compositions and improvisations may be, but the haunting sound the pair produced on reconstructions of the flutes with elemental rhythm accompaniment is not only credible but absorbing… Here is the world in all its breadth and depth.
— Herald, May 2017
