In ancient Greece, a legend about Pan and the beautiful nymph Siring appeared. It explains the emergence of multi-whistle flute, occurring in many nations of the world. The god Pan, who had a goat look, chased a beautiful nymph, lost it near the river bank and cut a sweet pipe from a coastal reed. This beautiful reed was turned by the gods into the fear of his beautiful Syringa. Another ancient Greek myth tells about Orpheus, a wonderful singer who conquered the evil furies who missed him in the kingdom of the shadows of Hades. It is known that Orpheus could liven up stones and trees with his singing and playing the lyre (kithar). Festive retinues of the god Dionysus also differed in music and dance. There are many Dionysian scenes in musical iconography, where, along with wine and delicacies, there are musical instruments playing in his surroundings.

After studying music from different nations, the first sources of the ancient tribes’ folklore, several scientific hypotheses were put forward explaining the origin of music. According to one of them, music as an art form originated on the basis of dance based on rhythm. This theory is confirmed by the culture of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where rhythm and mobility play a dominant role in music, and the most important instruments are percussion.

According to another hypothesis, primacy is also given to the rhythm underlying the emergence of music. The latter is considered the result of a person’s work activity in a team, during concerted physical actions in the process of joint labor.

The theory of C. Darwin, emanating from natural selection and survival of the most adapted organisms, made it possible to assume that music appeared as a special form of living nature, as sound international rivalry in the love of males (who are vociferous and more beautiful).

The “linguistic” theory of the origin of music considers the intonation bases of music, its connection with speech. It was necessary for a person to give sound signals, which led him to say that, from discordant, unstable sounds, the voice began to fix the tone at the same height, then fix certain intervals between different tones (to distinguish more harmonious intervals, which was perceived as merging) and repeating short motifs. A great role in understanding musical phenomena was played by the ability of a person to transpose the same motive, a tune. At the same time, both voice and musical instrument were the means to extract sounds.

The rhythm was involved in the process of intonation (intonation rhythm) and helped to identify the most significant for the melody, marked the caesuras, contributed to the formation of frets.