Whispers of Wood

When did we learn to make music from green and growing things, like wood and reed?

Archaeologist Dr Brenna Hassett takes us on a several-million-year-long journey to ask how we came to be the species that makes music. It is the story of noise. Purposeful, beautiful noise. And the unbelievable talent we have for adapting the material world we live in to make instruments that make music.

The problem is, not all of our evidence for the past is created equal. Something with the solidity of stone we can trace and time. But everyday, easy-use things that were our ancestors' first taste of material culture? Gone. Rotted away millions of years ago, precisely because they were made of what we had to hand: grasses, reeds, woods. Will we ever know when the first wooden flute was played?

This series of essays is part of Key Changes: Radio 3's Essential History of Classical Music
Written and read by Dr Brenna Hassett from the University of Lancashire
Produced and directed by Becky Ripley