35,000-Year-Old Flute Is Oldest Music Instrument Ever Found 139
Omomyid writes "The AFP is reporting the discovery of a 35,000 year-old flute, made from a vulture wing bone. The context described makes it sound like a musician's shop. There were also fragments of ivory-based flutes and flint tools. Being at least 35KYO this bone flute beats the previous oldest-known musical instrument by at least 5,000 years and puts it very close to the beginning of the Aurignacian culture."
My Heavens! (Score:5, Funny)
I doubt it's the oldest (Score:4, Funny)
I bet people have been playing the skin flute for far longer
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Oblig YEC reesponse (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Oblig YEC reesponse (Score:4, Funny)
agreed. and if you listen to the 35,000 year old flute music backwards, you can hear satanic incantations hidden by "backwards boneflute masking"
Re:Oblig YEC reesponse (Score:5, Funny)
And if you filmed the discovery of this flute and play it backwards, you see a team of scientist burying a flute for 35,000 years only to have it discovered by some primitive human, who then picks it up and starts playing it....
Minor correction (Score:3, Funny)
"...who then picks it up and starts playing it....badly"
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Troll! try Funny. Sheesh, who gave mod point to the flautist?
I await whiny flautist reprisal telling my I'm a troll and that she is TO better then the other flute players.
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We've both been around long enough to understand the counter-intuitive nature of mod point assignment...
Still, after some consideration, I imagine the flautist would actually start sucking musical notes out of the air. Quite a feat for a primitive Homo sapiens.
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Hard to say. We don't know too much about their culture. At this time it seems they didn't need to spend as much time surviving as was once thought. This means down time and no TV. Like my childhood in the 70's.
We had TV, but nothing A kid would watch during the day.
Interesting! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Interesting! (Score:5, Insightful)
It makes a person wonder just how long ago music was enjoyed (besides whistling or singing) or did we just grunt our way around?
The more I learn about the subject, the more convinced I am that the ancients were not the unsophisticated primitives that we often imagine them to be.
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I am also thinking that plenty of much older bones and sticks were also used as percussion instruments.
Re:Interesting! (Score:5, Interesting)
But what's really interesting about this flute is that the harmonics are very close to a modern-day flute - 35,000 years later! There is a sample of the recreated sound right now on the New York Times website (permalink [nytimes.com])...
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Almost like the laws of physics haven't changed at all!
Same size shaft, holes, and lengths will produce nearly the same frequency.
Add to it that there is a range which most people find pleasant, and it's not surprise at all.
Re:Interesting! (Score:5, Insightful)
When you say "... most people find pleasant...", you are right on the edge of a rather profound idea. The laws of physics haven't changed, but people certainly have. Does this mean that what they found pleasant and what we find pleasant are similar? Does that mean that musical perception is largely unchanged in the last 35 millenia?
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People haven't changed as much as people like to believe.
"Does this mean that what they found pleasant and what we find pleasant are similar? "
I believe that to be true. The assembly of the note order may be different, but the specif frequency peple seem to like wouldn't.
For example: I don't think primitive man would enjoy a loud prolonged shrill anymore then you or I would. This explains why the flute was buried...ZING!
"Does that mean that musical perception is largely unchanged in the last 35 millenia?"
I
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This guy [mtu.edu] explains part of it nicely. Granted, the page is speaking about string rather than wind instruments, but the ideas of harmonics is the important part. Basically, the frequency of harmonic notes will be mathematically related in some fashion.
Now, there is nothing absolute about a musical note. Sure, in western scales, notes are defined as having a pa
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NotBornYesterday's conclusion was dead on! The AC is also correct.
In the example [nytimes.com], the ancient flute played the pitches Eb, F, G, Bb, and C, which is a simple pentatonic scale. When in this particular order, it's called a major pentatonic scale. It's incidental that the pitches are close to these modern pitches (AC's point). The important thing is the distance from one pitch to the next, or in other words, the ratio of one pitch to anot
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I would suspect those scales exist becasue of the size of the hand, and because of how they sound. Not because someone mathematically figured it out; that came later.
I don't think people started playing music after the figured out the physics and math. I'm pretty sure people created music and the exact math was applies to what they have found to be what people play.
Aren't those scales likely to be used by anyone looking to make a comfortable flute to play?
Considering it is highly likely that this is the fir
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I'll merely point out that instruments other than flute are constructed to make the pentatonic scale simple to play - the black notes on the keyboard are the most obvious. The scale, and the pitches exist independently of the instruments that produce them.
The AC's post regarding perception of harmonics in the brain bears this out. The pentatonic scale offers all the consonant intervals, leaving out only minor seconds and augmented fourths. I guess we shouldn't be surprised that peo
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I think you may be missing a little here.
What is amazing isn't that the flute doesn't make an annoying shrill, but that it's scale is similar to ours.
Beyond us having 12 tones in a scale, the temperament. Simply, the spacing in pitch between the tones.
Even in modern tones we have many examples of different tuning and different scales.
The most common scale and temperament people today recognize is the 12 tones in equal temperament (12-TET). That is the notes are divided equally into 12 steps between the fund
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Does that mean that musical perception is largely unchanged in the last 35 millenia?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zappa [wikipedia.org]
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Brass and wood-wind musical instruments are substantially influenced by the player. A person with no pitch can't play a flute well, for example, though they could still be a good violinist.
It's likely any tonal similarities are due to the modern musician's training, rather than the instrument itself.
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Brass and wood-wind musical instruments are substantially influenced by the player. A person with no pitch can't play a flute well, for example, though they could still be a good violinist.
What? Violins are very easy to change the pitch, simply from slightly "missing." In my experience (as a brass player, music major, etc), violinists have to have better pitch or they sound awful. A mediocre flautist is more bearable than a mediocre violinist.
In fact, one of my cellist friends in school commented that he had to be able to sing every note he played on the cello, or he wouldn't hit it in tune.
Re:Interesting! (Score:5, Insightful)
For awhile now I've been wondering about the connection between music and religion. For several thousand years, the most common place to hear a serious musical performance was at a religious ceremony. (Unless you were nobility)
A pipe organ in a cathedral is a staggeringly amazing experience even for those of us able to find and listen to recordings ahead of time. Imagine the reaction of the poor common folk who had nothing but a reed flute and some singing in a grass hut to prepare them for it.
As much as video killed the radio star, I wonder how much recorded music killed religion. (See the Taliban, who ban it, for instance.)
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Pipe organs were the new music entertainment technology that got people in.
Re:Interesting! (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks for the cool link :-) You're misusing the terminology a little -- the original NYT article is more correct.
Every sound can be broken down into a sum of sine waves. Usually, for basic physical reasons, those sine waves have frequencies that are all integer multiples (or nearly integer multiples) of the fundamental frequency. When they have this integer-multiple relationship, they're called "harmonics;" the more general term for the case where they're not integer multiples (anharmonic) is "partials." Any wind instrument that's made out of an air column is going to have integer-multiple harmonics, not anharmonic partials. So when you say that the harmonics are close to a modern flute, that's not really a useful statement; trivially, for physical reasons, any tone played on any wind instrument is going to have the same harmonics as the same note played on any other wind instrument. The only thing that will be different is the strengths of the harmonics.
What the expert quoted in the NYT article says is "The tones are quite harmonic." This is a different statement. It means that if you had two flutes like this one, and you played combinations of notes, they would sound good together. This has to do with how the scale is constructed. He also doesn't say the scale is the same as any particular modern one, just that it's a scale that sounds good in relation to itself.
The only cross-cultural universal we see today is that all cultures have what's called octave identification, meaning that, e.g., middle C and the C an octave above it are perceived as being similar, and able to play the same musical function. Most cultures don't have harmony at all -- that's mainly a function of Western music. Different cultures generally don't use the same scales. E.g., Beethoven, a Javanese gamelan orchestra, and a Delta blues musician use different scales in different ways. It wouldn't even make sense to interpret the expert's quote as saying that the scale is the same as today's scale, there's more than one scale used today.
Unfortunately I couldn't get the sound widget to play in my browser.
Re:Interesting! (Score:5, Interesting)
"Harmonics" doesn't really mean anything in this sense. Flutes don't play two notes simultaneously, so there is no harmony. This flute is capable of playing at least 5 distinct pitches, or at least 10 if you count overblowing to get a higher octave. The notes in the example [nytimes.com] are Eb, F, G, Bb, and C, which is a pentatonic [wikipedia.org] scale.
This is the most amazing thing to me. The pentatonic scale's pitches have the simple frequency ratios of 1:9/8:5/4:3/2:5/3. Instruments designed to play this scale have been found almost everywhere humans play music. The person that made this instrument perceived, through sound, these simple mathematical ratios. 35,000 years ago, humans had already discovered the beauty in mathematics.
Also, I can draw the conclusion that the person that made this flute had made flutes previously, or learned from someone who did. The chances of gouging holes in a bone at random and having a very accurate pentatonic scale along with a serviceable embouchure hole in the end product is vanishingly small. This skill is learned by trial and error or instruction. This opens up more questions. If the maker of this flute didn't invent the pentatonic scale, who did? How old is the scale?
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Indeed, clapsticks (sticks that hit each other as opposed to a drum) are probably quite ancient, but it would be hard to distinguish their remains as an instrument rather than a tool.
Re:Interesting! (Score:5, Insightful)
Or that we are not the sophisticated advanced species we often imagine us to be?
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I think you just proved AC's point.
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> The more I learn about the subject, the more convinced I am that
> the ancients were not the unsophisticated primitives that
> we often imagine them to be.
G. K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man [amazon.com] has some thoughts along the same lines. From this page [wikilivres.info]:
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the more convinced I am that the ancients were not the unsophisticated primitives that we often imagine them to be.
A quick trip to the countryside (of any nation) should change your mind. There are still plenty of unsophisticated primitives hanging around, and most of them would have no idea what to do with this rudimentary instrument besides scratch their backs with it.
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And none of the unsophisticated primitives you mention are more than 140 years old (I'm being very generous). That's some pretty big extrapolation you're relying on there.
Besides, the coexistence of "primitives" and "moderns" today, indeed throughout recorded history, would tend to imply that there was such a variety then as well, would it not?
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Friedrich Seeberger, a German specialist in ancient music, reproduced the ivory flute in wood. Experimenting with the replica, he found that the ancient flute produced a range of notes comparable in many ways to modern flutes. "The tones are quite harmonic," he said.
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Speak for yourself. I have always envied them their mammoth hunting skils, their survival training and their fluent Indo-European. Hell, man, anyone who can pronounce words like "gnhjotam" or "wlnexmi" without asphyxiating deserves some respect.
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They really weren't. If my Anthropology degree did anything, it made me realize how absurd the portrayal of our ancestors really is. They weren't really like Captain Caveman or the Flintstones.
But, this is what happens when we let media shape our view. Jump forward to more modern times. I remember a survey taken as part of a study by one of my college professors. When approx. 600 native Floridians were asked to estimate how long Florida had been occupied, less than 5% were within 1,000 years of the currentl
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Almost like entertainment TV and movies got it wrong..shocking~
"Hell, I remember one of my history books from middle school claimed Neanderthals had the mental capacity of a 10-year-old.
The mental capacity of a 10 year old is far greater then people seem to imagine.
Hell, the other day I got a 50mW 532nm laser, and my 8 year old looked at a spinning fan and asked if the laser could be used to measure the fans speed.
I said yes and she said Then it can be used to measure the speed of the laser.
The hole convers
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evolution of musical ability is open question (Score:2)
Music ability appears to occupy other parts of the brain than language. Brain damage- (strokes, lesion) may damage one ability, but not the other. Some stutterers can sing or chant verse without stuttering.
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It makes a person wonder just how long ago music was enjoyed (besides whistling or singing) or did we just grunt our way around?
The more I learn about the subject, the more convinced I am that the ancients were not the unsophisticated primitives that we often imagine them to be.
They really weren't. Well, at least, some of them weren't. That's why you should respect your elders. ;-)
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I thought Xenu's Galactic Confederacy was supposed to be rather advanced, and that was 75 million years ago!
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It sure was. And now look what we savages have made out of it...
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Just because no tapes of casting shows survived doesn't mean they didn't have any.
Re:Interesting! (Score:4, Informative)
There's little reason to believe that our ancestors, going quite far back, had any less inherent intellectual, cultural or social capacity than us. (Other than what we might have from superior nutrition, health, etc. See Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel for that...)
Jared's "The Third Chimpanzee" goes about how humans branched off and took a separate path from the "other chimps". In it he also goes speculates about how and when we took our great leap forward.
While Guns Germs and Steel seemed a more insightful book, The Third Chimpanzee goes exactly about the evolutionary differentiation that made us, how different (or not) we are from chimps and other mammals, and about the plausible evolutionary explanations for these differences.
Re:Interesting! (Score:5, Interesting)
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The major/minor system is less than a thousand years old, and only occurs in Western music.
This one time (Score:5, Funny)
This one time, 35,000 years ago at band camp...
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... no stairway. denied.
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Come on, this far in and there have been absolutely know "playing the bone flute" jokes?
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Sorry I was busy fluting my playing bone.
I think you mean (Score:2)
This one time, 35,000 years ago at band cave...
Is it april 1st again already? (Score:1, Troll)
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My ancestors used mammoth bones (Score:2, Informative)
But then, we got those when we rode dinosaurs with Jesus.
Mind you, it was hard lugging around a large mammoth flute.
I'm Trying to Get Back to My Roots (Score:1)
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I predict this will appeal more to the older crowd and while a lot of the themes of the songs have anti-Cro Magnum themes, I think this sort of retro music is long overdue.
Along with the flute was an inscription in a precursor hieroglyphic stating action would be taken over "making available" with an urge to settle early for a fee of three bison and a wife.
Neanderthal invented musical instruments (Score:5, Informative)
It is the oldest for the Homo sapiens, but there were flutes found on Neanderthal sites, much older flutes.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/376813/neanderthal_flute_the_oldest_musical.html
Re:Neanderthal invented musical instruments (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up. Assuming that the linked article is correct, this recent find is at least 8,000 years newer than the oldest known flute, and possibly as much as 47,000 years newer. Of course, this may be the oldest definitively dated flute.
What is fascinating about this is that it gives you just how far back primitive man was creating complex artistic works. I'm sure there are other instruments of similar vintage---drums and the like---though they may not have survived the years since. The funny part will be when scientists discover that they've underestimated the age of the xylophone family by the better part of a million years. :-) I mean really, if something requiring as much carving as a flute goes back 80,000 years, how absurd is it to believe that something as simple as a bunch of sticks cut to different lengths only goes back to 2,000 B.C.?
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Err... gives you an idea of just how far back....
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What is really fascinating about this is for how long our species was almost stagnant (from out point of view).
And how rapidly we advance nowadays. What are the factors? Are we really nearing to tech singularity?
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My money is on food.
Early human had to spend a lot of time to get his stomach filled. Not much time left to sit, think and invent. When you have plenty of food, you get your brains free for other things.
Couple it with superstition (and today's more or less lack of it, at least in the scientific circles) and I think you have a pretty good explanation.
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Complex vs Simple. (Score:3, Funny)
I understand that this could be considered definitive proof of an 'instrument', but surely they don't discount that beating two sticks together can be considered as being musical either.
Consider this: prehistoric man had to be MORE intelligent to survive then modern man. If all electrical devices stop working tomorrow, a significant % of the population will be dead within 4 weeks.
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That doesn't point to a difference in intelligence, just a different set of needed skills.
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prehistoric man had to be MORE intelligent to survive then modern man.
No, thye did not.
"..., a significant % of the population will be dead within 4 weeks."
which has nothing to do with intelligence.
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Not that that means you're less intelligent for being happy with banging two sticks together (that's about the degree of musical aptitude I possess), but one obviously takes a little more forethought to produc
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Large % of population would be dead simply because there would be no place for them, no resources, in pre-industrial society.
Are members of the "protected tribes" necessarily more intelligent?
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Consider this: prehistoric man had to be MORE intelligent to survive then modern man. If all electrical devices stop working tomorrow, a significant % of the population will be dead within 4 weeks.
You're confusing knowledge and intelligence.
We're all capable of learning how to live off the land. We've simply never learned how due to lack of need.
Cave Geeks? (Score:3, Funny)
I wonder if they wore underwear so that Ogg could give the owner of this flute a wedgie.
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What does underwear have to do with a music format?
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Given his name, and the rather rought times back then, he's probably been stuffed into a container with a few parts of him missing.
Needs some inner light ... (Score:2, Funny)
RiAA... (Score:1, Insightful)
Has the RIAA claimed ownership rights over the music they made with it?
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LMFAO!!!!! hehehehe.... I love it! Not far from the truth. Check this out.. 1909!!!
http://www.natch.net/stuff/78_license/
That's neat and all, but I'd like to see... (Score:1)
That flute is neat, and looks well made (chamfered holes?!)
But what I'd love to see even more is a piece of 35,000 year old sheet music. That way, we'd know what they grooved to back when the earth was still cooling, and people walked to school uphill both ways in the snow, dontchaknow.
Seriously. I wanna see the music.
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You won't find any - that was before we got it in our heads that music was something to be written down, analyzed, and repeated ;)
Journalism sucks (Score:2)
There is a serious problem with journalism here. From TFA,
Nearly 22 centimetres (8.7 inches) long and 2.2 centimetres (one inch) in diameter
The photograph clearly shows that the object in question is not more than 2/3 the diameter of the person's finger. This is NOT 2.2cm -- it is probably around 10mm to 12mm. So how much of ANY of the rest of the info in this article accurate?
Good question (Score:2)
however looking at the original AP story, it doesn't mention the diameter.
Anyways, the general answer to your question is 'check other reasonable sources.'
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090624/ap_on_sc/eu_germany_prehistoric_flute [yahoo.com]
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/06/24/international/i100006D91.DTL&tsp=1 [sfgate.com]
Inner Light... (Score:2)
So was the discoverer forced to live the life of one of the villagers in a simulation, learning the way of their culture and becoming richer for the experience?
South Germany = Cradle of civilization? (Score:1, Interesting)
In 2006, archaeologists in south Germany found the first art object known to man:
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/prehistoric/ivory-carvings-swabian-jura.htm
Now the oldest instrument was found, also in south Germany.
I guess this means civilization originated in Deutshland.
I'd like some hot chicks (and other flute jokes) (Score:5, Funny)
to date my bone flute.
*giggity*
How did they know it was a flute? There were carvings on the wall from people whining they could ahve done it better/
How did they get two flutes in tune? they bashed the skull in of one of the bone flautists.
Why did the neanderthal go extinct? to get away from the flute recital.
How many bone Flautists did it taker to start a fire? 2 one to do it and another to push them into the fire.
What do you call a flute that's been buried for 35000 years? A good start.
2 flutists ride a mammoth over a cliff, what's the tragedy? you can fit 4 flutists on a mammoth.
I can go on, but unlike a flautists I know when to stop.
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heheh.
I want to find a girl that wants me to kiss her like I was playing a french horn...
We need a flute recital. (Score:1)
So much history we don't know... (Score:2)
If humanity started 35,000 or more years ago...
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And?
An interesting fact (Score:2)
It shows that Homo Sapiens created music for over 33K years before the advent of copyrights.
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Yeah, it's incomplete. It should say: Apparently, the instrument has never been allowed to play music, as it was not RIAA-approved. The maker's skeleton found nearby without pelvis: obviously had his ass sued off.
Re:Flute (Score:5, Funny)
Fail.
Pelvis was obliterated due to snu-snu.
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"35,000 year old flute found, RIAA proposes extending copyrights to protect original composer's intellectual property"