Short answers, pulled from the story.
The earliest objects widely accepted as musical instruments are bone flutes from the Swabian Jura in Germany, found in the Geissenklösterle, Hohle Fels and Vogelherd caves. The three Geissenklösterle flutes are the oldest, dated to about 43,150 to 39,370 years before present. The disputed Divje Babe Flute from Slovenia, made from a cave bear femur, could be older if it is truly an instrument.
There is no consensus on the origin of music. Charles Darwin proposed in his 1871 book The Descent of Man that music arose through sexual selection, while Herbert Spencer and Richard Wagner argued music and language share a precursor. Others, including Karl Bücher and Curt Sachs, tied music to practical needs or to a split between speech and emotional expression.
Different cultures credit different figures with inventing music. Christian mythology names Jubal, Persian tradition names Shah Jamshid, Hinduism names the goddess Saraswati, and Greek mythology credits the muses. Chinese mythology credits the musician Ling Lun, who is said to have made the bamboo flute by imitating the song of the mythical fenghuang birds.
The oldest surviving written music is the Hurrian songs from Ugarit in Syria, the oldest of which is the Hymn to Nikkal, dated to around 1400 BCE. The Seikilos epitaph, dated to the 2nd century CE or later, is the earliest entirely complete noted musical composition.
Opera grew out of the Florentine Camerata, a group active in Florence in the 1570s and 1580s who aimed to restore the music of the ancient Greeks. Their work produced a declamatory singing style called monody and a staged dramatic form now known as opera. The first operas, written around 1600, mark the end of the Renaissance and the beginning of the Baroque era.
The reign of Khosrow II during the Sasanian period, from 226 to 651 CE, is regarded as a golden age of Persian music. Khosrow II was its most outstanding patron, and the most famous of his court musicians was Barbad, who worked as both court poet and musician.