author

Hermann Smith

1824–1910

Best known for writing about how music began and how instruments were tuned, this nineteenth-century British writer explored everything from piano tuning to the musical cultures of the ancient world. His books blend practical musical knowledge with a wide curiosity about history and sound.

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 (1824–1910) was a British writer on music whose work ranged from the practical craft of tuning to broad studies of musical history. Surviving catalog and public-domain records confirm him as the author of The World's Earliest Music, as well as other books including The Art of Tuning the Pianoforte and Modern Organ Tuning.

His best-known book, published in 1904, traces music back through ancient civilizations such as Greece, Egypt, China, Assyria, and Babylonia. That mix of technical knowledge and historical curiosity gives his writing a distinctive character: part handbook, part investigation into how people first made and understood sound.

Although little biographical detail is easy to confirm today, his published work shows a sustained interest in instruments, temperament, and the long story of music itself. For listeners drawn to early music history, he offers a window into how one early twentieth-century author tried to connect the science of sound with the deep past of human culture.