author

Hermann Smith

1824–1910

Known for writing clearly about organs, orchestras, and the deep history of music, this English author brought a practical musician’s eye to big historical questions. His books move easily from the mechanics of sound to the oldest traces of music in ancient civilizations.

1 Audiobook

The World's Earliest Music Traced to Its Beginnings in Ancient Lands by Collected Evidence of Relics, Records, History, and Musical Instruments from Greece, Etruria, Egypt, China, Through Asyria and Babylonia, to the Primitive Home, the Land of Akkad and Sumer

The World's Earliest Music Traced to Its Beginnings in Ancient Lands by Collected Evidence of Relics, Records, History, and Musical Instruments from Greece, Etruria, Egypt, China, Through Asyria and Babylonia, to the Primitive Home, the Land of Akkad and Sumer

by Hermann Smith

About the author

Hermann Smith was an English writer on music and musical instruments, born in Maidenhead in 1824 and later associated with Hampstead, London, where he died in 1910. A specialist source on organ history describes him as a harmonium builder and a clerk in the piano trade, which helps explain the hands-on, practical tone of his writing.

His published work ranges widely across musical subjects. Contemporary title pages and library records connect him with books including Modern Organ Tuning, The Making of Sound in the Organ and in the Orchestra, and The World's Earliest Music. Together, these works show an author interested both in the physical making of sound and in the long story of how music developed.

For modern readers, Smith is especially interesting because he writes as both a craftsman and a curious historian. In The World's Earliest Music from 1904, he set out to trace music back through Greece, Egypt, China, Assyria, and Babylonia, turning technical knowledge into an ambitious exploration of the ancient past.