There are other ancestral ghosts hidden in the Western canon. When Bach set lines from the Song of Songs in his cantata Wachet auf, he drew on a tradition that goes back at least as far as the Sumerian hymns written by the world’s first known composer, Enheduanna, in the third millennium BC. Likewise, the 6/8 time of the final movement of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony is African in origin, brought into Europe through popular dances in the 15th century.

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