This is a unique 60.000 years old flute music performance, played on the intriguing instrument found in Divje babe, Slovenia.
A potpourri of fragments from compositions of various authors has been selected, to show the capabilities of the instrument, tonal range, staccato, legato, glissando… Music played in the film:
1. Fragment from Adaggio in G Minor, Tomas Albinioni
2. free improvisation, mocking animal voices, at the end the presentation of simultaneous sounding of two tones
3. Ode to Joy, 9th Symphony, Ludwig van Beethoven
4. Slovenian (Prekmurje region) etno song Vsi so venci vejli
5. Slovenian (Koroška region) etno song Rož, Podjuna, Zila
6. Nabucco, Giuseppe Verdi
7. Bolero, Maurice Ravel
8. From the new world, Antonin Dvořák
Short film, full title is Playing the Neanderthal flute of Divje babe, is authored by Sašo Niskač, music is performed by Ljuben Dimkaroski, scientific adviser is Dr. Ivan Turk, archaeologist. Extraordinary find from 1995 in Divje babe cave site, western Slovenia, it is most comprehensively described in the paper at http://www.cox.si/tidldibab.pdf, was met with great enthousiasm on one side and with great scepticism on the other side of the scientific audience, for details see http://www.greenwych.ca/divje-b.htm. Only in 2009 the dilemma if the holes in the bone were accidental or purpose-made, was finally resolved. Ljuben Dimkaroski, member of the Ljubljana Opera Orchestra for 35 years (trumpet), was given a clay replica of the flute by the curator of Slovenian National Museum on occasion of Ljuben’s exhibition “Image in Stone”. In his dreams, about a year later, he got a clue of how to play this prehistoric instrument.