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SACRED MUSIC IN ANTIQUITY |
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| N.B.: A WinZip
(.zip) archive (17.9 MB) containing a PowerPoint Presentation (.ppt) and
sound files (.mp3) summarizing the historical and musical background to Suzanne
Haïk-Vantoura's work may be downloaded via
this link. |
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"Secular and sacred music played no less a role in the lives of the people of biblical
times than it does in our own day" ("Music", in Harper's Bible
Dictionary, p. 665). "It added to the pomp of national celebrations,
bolstered the soldier's courage, enlivened work and play, lent comfort in times of sadness, and provided inspiration
in religious expression" (op. cit.).
Obviously, this Web site focuses on the use of ancient Middle Eastern music as a vehicle
for religious expression. Yet to set ancient
sacred music in its proper context, we should first say some things about ancient music in general.
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First, "The sound of early Near Eastern music would seem less strange to the
modern ear than previously thought. Though we are not informed about ancient rhythms and tempos, we do know that
heptatonic, diatonic scales [scales of seven degrees based on steps and half-steps, as on the white keys of a piano],
familiar to us from modern music, also existed in antiquity" (op. cit.; emphasis mine). While the above remark about ancient rhythm is not quite true (thanks not
only to the Hebrew Bible and its melodic rendition, but to various ancient oral traditions), we have direct written
evidence about ancient scales, artistic renditions of stringed instruments and chironomists, and even surviving
instruments in various tunings.
We have already seen in our section on chironomy that the Egyptians
knew of the pentatonic (five-degree) scale.
The famous mural in Asshurbanipal's palace depicting an Elamite court orchestra shows the Elamites were also familiar
with the pentatonic scale. On that mural, they are shown to be playing in a simple harmony based on open fifths
(Curt Sachs, The Rise of Music in the Ancient World: East and West, first edition [W.W. Norton, 1943], pp. 99-100 and plate 3).
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Within this bas-relief are seven harpists who are (as Sachs says) "similar in
all details except that they are plucking different strings. Such difference must not be considered accidental
in an art work of realistic, indeed almost photographic, accuracy; nor can that single variation among otherwise
uniform players be explained by an artist's formal consideration. (...) Each harpist plucks two strings. As the
numbers of the strings plucked follow in intervals of five -- the fifth, tenth, fifteenth and the eighth, thirteenth,
eighteenth -- the genus [genre of scale] must be pentatonic, either with major thirds and semitones or with minor
thirds and whole tones. (...) Supposing that the fifth string sounds A, the tenth and the fifteenth sound a
and a"; and the eighth, thirteenth,
and eighteenth, e, e' and e". The
result is an empty fifth orchestrated in the modern way, the two notes being distributed among the seven players
in different combinations, as double octave, octave, unison and fifth" (op.
cit., p. 99). On page 100 Sachs gives us a table of the pitches played by
each of the seven harpers: |
| First |
harpist |
A-e" |
| Second |
harpist |
e-e' |
| Third |
harpist |
e'-e" |
| Fourth |
harpist |
e'-e' |
| Fifth |
harpist |
a'-e" |
| Sixth |
harpist |
a'-e" |
| Seventh |
harpist |
(a)-e' |
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Unless there is a transcription error in Sachs' table, the fourth harpist is not playing
two strings after all, but one. (Perhaps he is playing a harmonic on one string?)
In any case, the ambitus covered by the
harps is a double octave and a fifth --
a most impressive range! This was in the pentatonic scale, the scale also used by the Egyptian chironomists (who
were portrayed, along with the instruments and musicians they conducted, with like precision). Lise Manniche (based on her examination of portrayals of ancient Egyptian harps) concludes
that the Egyptians also knew of and used scales with chromatic (half-step) or even smaller intervals. This would
seem to be confirmed by recent work by others with reconstructions of ancient Egyptian reed pipes or nays tuned to various scales. These include the diatonic
scale in the "minor" mode, the chromatic
scale (the twelve-degree scale based on half steps, as on the white and black keys of the piano), and certain "enharmonic" scales (which shall be discussed below).
But the heptatonic or diatonic scale was also known from high antiquity in Mesopotamia.
Cuneiform tablets found in Babylonia and Assyria (that is, in the cities of Assur, Ur and Nippur) and the city
of Ugarit in modern Syria document the existence of that scale and all seven modes based on it as far back as 3,000
years ago. The Mesopotamian texts in particular document a system of tuning a lyre in the seven diatonic modes,
complete with technical terms for the modes and even a description of the tritone (augmented fourth or diminished fifth interval) as the "unclear" interval of a given
mode. (Apparently only the tritone was considered "dissonant" by the ancient Mesopotamians -- which fact
alone has implications both for melodic and harmonic practice.) The various modes were derived by a tuning cycle
called a "cycle of fifths" -- the very same cycle used to tune a folk harp "by ear" today.
The resulting "temperament" of the modes would have been "Pythagorean" -- that is, the same
temperament noted by the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (who studied music and mathematics in Egypt and Mesopotamia
before founding his famous school).
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One ancient and important source on ancient music theory is a cuneiform text called
CBS 10996. It is described as a Babylonian (Akkadian) mathematical text from Nippur, dating to the middle to late
1st millennium B.C. It is presently in the University Museum of Philadelphia. A text from Ur of about the same
period, U. 3011 (a Sumerian-Akkadian lexical text), now in the British Museum, helps explain the terminology in
CBS 10996. An Assyrian (Akkadian) song catalog (VAT 10101, late 2nd millennium B.C., Pergamon Museum, Berlin) and
an Old Babylonian (Akkadian) text of instructions for tuning a lyre, found in Ur (U. 7/80, early to middle 2nd
millennium B.C., now in the British Museum), with CBS 10996 and U. 3011, allowed a complete and coherent explanation
of the ancient tuning system used in ancient Assyria and Babylonia. A fifth text, a Hurrian cult hymn with musical
notation from Ugarit (RS 15.30 + 15.49 + 17.387, middle of 2nd millennium B.C., now in the National Museum of Damascus),
uses musical terms found in the other four documents. This latter text is said
to be the oldest extant text with written musical notation. Several musicologists and cuneiform specialists from several countries -- among them
Benno Landsberger, Anne D. Kilmer, O.R. Gurney, M. Duchesne-Guillemin, H.G. Guterbock, E. Sollberger, D. Wulstan,
H. Kummel, and E. Laroche -- have examined these five texts. A number of attempts have been made to reconstruct
their musical significance, especially that of the Hurrian cult hymn. The results in the latter case are noteworthy
for their wide divergence, yet the essentials
of the music theory behind all these obscure documents seems well understood.
Joe Monzo,
who has studied these documents with input from Kilmer et al., believes that CBS 10996 in particular preserves an "exercise for the student" in
tuning and playing a lyre. His reconstruction of how the exercise would sound in performance is given below in
MIDI format. N.B.: If you cannot play this file on your computer using the
plug-in below, you should be able to play the file via this link.
We have disabled the right-click functionality in Internet Explorer
in order to forestall the unauthorized downloading of copyrighted
files on this page.
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Dr. Anne Kilmer et al. of the University of California, Berkeley, made a detailed
study of the Ugaritic song text. Their work was published as an LP and accompanying booklet. [The original publication
data follows: Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, Richard L. Crocker, Robert R. Brown, Sounds
From Silence: Recent Discoveries in Ancient Near Eastern Music (Bit Enki Publications,
POB 9068, Berkeley, CA., 94709, copyright 1976).]
What follows is Dr. Kilmer's reconstruction of the tuning system documented by the above finds. (A full explanation
of the terms used and the way they are employed is found in the above publication and others.) Note that Kilmer's
reconstruction below places the tonic note of the mode exactly where Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura places it: on the
modern note (E). In both cases, this is simply a matter of musicological convention (since we do not know what
the tonic pitch actually was). |
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The above-mentioned song tablet from Ugarit is a hymn to the local moon goddess (Nikkal,
wife of the moon god). The hymn itself (as noted) uses Mesopotamian musical theory and technical terms. The clay
tablet itself is broken, water-damaged and difficult to read. |
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As for the exact
musical significance of the Hurrian cult hymn, Monzo states the present state of understanding quite well:
To say that "there is some controversy" about the proper reconstruction
of this piece is a vast understatement: since the first recognition that this tablet contained musical content,
by H.G. Guterbock in 1970 (Revue d'Assyriologie),
there have been no less than 9 different attempts at reconstruction, varying wildly:
1971 David Wulstan
1974 A. D. Kilmer
1976 M. Duchesne-Guillemin
1977, 1978 Thiel
1982 Raoul Vitale
1982 M. Duchesne-Guillemin
1988 Cerny
1993 M. L. West
1998 R. J. Dumbrill
(In fact, there may be at least two other reconstructions extant, including Monzo's.
His score, with accompanying .mp3 file, may be found on his own Web page.)
Kilmer's reconstruction of the hymn assumed that the intervals described in the tablet
actually represented harmony. The recording and booklet produced by herself, Richard L. Crocker and Robert R. Brown,
Sounds from Silence: Recent Discoveries in Ancient Near Eastern Music (Berkeley, CA.: Bit Enki Publications, 1976), detail her reconstruction of the hymn and its
theoretical basis. The following musical score is taken from her booklet.
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The Hurrian language itself was not well
understood when Kilmer produced her work (and may still not be).
"The meaning of one phrase, however, was quite clear then:
Wesal tatib tisiya means 'Thou (the goddess) lovest them in
(thy) heart,' and the closing phrase,
Wewe hanuku, appears to mean something close to
'Born of thee'" (Kilmer et al.,
op. cit., p. 15). Religious
phrases which sound familiar to us, even today...
Progress has been made in understanding
the meaning of the text. A much fuller (though still tentative)
translation was featured (along with the musical score in
performance) in the exhibit on ancient music that began in January
2008 at the Bible
Lands Museum in Jerusalem.
What follows is a performance by Richard Crocker of the above
transcription of the Hurrian hymn, accompanied by the replica of the
Silver Lyre constructed by Robert Brown. To purchase the complete
recording produced by Anne Kilmer et al., please visit the
Bella Roma
Music Web Site.
N.B.: We have disabled the right-click
functionality in Internet Explorer in order to forestall the
unauthorized downloading of copyrighted files on this page.
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The Hurrian language itself was not well
understood when Kilmer produced her work (and may still not be).
"The meaning of one phrase, however, is quite clear:
Wesal tatib tisiya means 'Thou (the goddess) lovest them in
(thy) heart,' and the closing phrase,
Wewe hanuku, appears to mean something close to
'Born of thee'" (Kilmer et al.,
op. cit., p. 15). Religious
phrases which sound familiar to us, even today...
What follows is a set of three versions (produced by this author) of Kilmer's
reconstruction of the Hurrian hymn. They are strict transcription of
the above score for the General MIDI voices "String Ensemble 1" and
"Orchestral Harp" (both instruments playing the same parts at the
same pitches, thus imitating voices and lyres). The players in the
left column play WMA files, while the right column contains links to
MIDI and MP3 files.
N.B.: If you cannot play the three WMA versions using the plug-in players,
then the added links should enable you to play the versions in MIDI
or MP3 format. We have disabled the right-click
functionality in Internet Explorer in order to forestall the
unauthorized downloading of copyrighted files on this page.
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Here in MIDI and
in
WMA, the song is in the
"equal temperament" standard for modern Western instruments such as
the piano and the orchestral harp. This tuning was not known in
antiquity. Can you hear the subtle but salient
differences between this tuning and the ancient "cyclical" and
"divisive" tunings that follow? (Hint: the third and sixth intervals
are "sweeter", that is, more "consonant", in the third
example than in the second, whereas all the intervals in the first
example are slightly "dissonant".) |
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Here
in MIDI and
in
WMA, the song is in the
"cyclical (Pythagorean) tuning" implied by U. 7/80: a tuning
according to a strict cycle of perfect fourths and perfect fifths.
According to Curt Sachs (op. cit., p. 72), this style of
tuning (in whatever "mode", in whatever "genre" of scale) is
"natural" to ancient harps and lyres. It is tuning "by ear".
According to the book Harmonograph
by Anthony Ashton (Wooden Books, 2003, p. 13), this tuning is
suitable for plainchant and music accompanied by drones, while
"divisive" tuning is suitable for polyphony and chords. But it is
also suitable - indeed, necessary - for the heterophony
(the use of several parallel voices) and the simple harmony of
antiquity, such as we see documented in ancient Egypt's portrayals
of chironomy and instrumental technique and as is implied by
Haïk-Vantoura's decipherment of the te`amim. |
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Here
in MIDI and
in
WMA, the song is converted
from the "cyclical (Pythagorean) tuning" implied by U. 7/80 to the
"divisive (just) tuning" that closely follows the harmonic series in
its intervallic ratios. This is tuning not "by ear" (at least not on
a single string), but by the equipartition of a string into
fractional lengths (as on a fret board).
This tuning was known in ancient
Mesopotamia as being "natural" to lutes (Sachs, op. cit., pp.
73-75), and it also lies behind the scales and modes defined
by the te`amim.
CBS 10996 may be a set of instructions
showing how to return a lyre "by ear" from cyclical to divisive
tuning in various modes, without reference to a "monochord" (such as
a lute string). The Levitical and prophetic musicians easily could
have done something similar with their various modes, more complex
than those described in the Mesopotamian tuning tablets though the
biblical modes are. |
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Richard Dumbrill, a noted scholar of ancient Middle Eastern (and especially Mesopotamian and Hurrian) music,
has made his own arrangement of the Hurrian hymn in MIDI format (see below). Dumbrill's reconstruction includes
an added rhythmic ground, but assumes that the musical text itself defines melodic, not harmonic intervals
that were filled in by "passing tones". While Dumbrill's reconstruction (like those of Kilmer and others who have analyzed
the musical text) is highly conjectural, it is indisputable that the technical terms used by the hymn refer to
intervals within the diatonic scale (and define a particular mode). N.B.: If you cannot play this file on your computer
using the plug-in below, you should be able to play the file via
this link.
We have disabled the right-click functionality in Internet Explorer
in order to forestall the unauthorized downloading of copyrighted
files on this page. We do have Prof. Dumbrill's permission to use
his file.
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It is interesting that the reconstructed melody has (at first blush) much in common
with later Greek and Middle Eastern music. The Greeks acknowledged themselves the pupils of the music of high antiquity,
and specifically of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Asia and even Judah. A Greek composer adopted a scale known and
used in Judah (superficially similar to the Greek "Dorian" mode) for use in a hymn dedicated to Zeus;
and we have already mentioned the Greeks' borrowing of the nabla or
nablas, which was simply another form of the
nevel used by the Hebrews. Whereas Muslim music theory acknowledges its debt to Greek music theory, as well as
to ancient diatonicism itself...and so the musical influences come full circle.
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Two famous and largely complete examples of ancient Greek music are the Delphic Hymns
to Apollo. They were discovered at the city of Delphi, where the Delphic Oracle resided; both are wrtten on stone.
Gregorio Paniagua (in the liner notes to his recording Musique de la Grèce antique) dates them both to
about 138 B.C. Curt Sachs (op. cit.,
p. 198) notes that these hymns were originally published by Carlo del Grande, "Nuovo fammento di musica
greca in un papiro del Museo del Cairo," in Aegyptus V (1936), p. 369; Theodore Reinach in Fouilles de Delphes III ii (1912); and Otto Crusius, "Die delphischen Hymnen," in Erganzungsheft
zum Philologus LIII (1894). Accurate transcriptions of both Delphic Hymns
appear in Denkmäler Altgriechischer Musik
by E. Pöhlmann and M. L. West and Ancient Greek Music by M. L. West. (My thanks to Philip Neuman for this last bit of information, as the earlier
publications are very hard to find.)
The following transcription of the opening lines of the First Delphic Hymn is taken
from Ancient Inventions by Peter James
and Nick Thorpe (Ballantine Books, NY., 1994), p. 608:
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The following MIDI arrangement of the hymn is by this author.
N.B.:
If you cannot play this file on your computer using the plug-in below, you
should be able to play the file via
this link. We have disabled the right-click
functionality in Internet Explorer in order to forestall the
unauthorized downloading of copyrighted files on this page. |
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The ancient Greeks' greatest music theoretician, Aristoxenus of Tarantum (4th century
B.C.), had this to say about the origin of the diatonic scale: "We can establish that the diatonic is the
first (proton) and the oldest (presbyteron); this is the type that the human voice naturally finds" (Harmonic Elements I, cited by Haïk-Vantoura in her
Les 150 Psaumes dans leurs melodies antiques,
p. T-51). The chromatic scale, which may be derived from the diatonic scale, was also ancient; in Aristoxenus'
view; its origins "go back into the night of time"! He also cited "mixed" scales of the "diatonic-chromatic"
genre (a modern example being our "harmonic minor"), as did Plutarch (De
musica, chapter 33). A diatonic scale with "chromatic alterations"
is the basis of the First Delphic Hymn given above. Such scales are still characteristic of a number of forms of
ethnic music in Europe and the Middle East, including specifically "Jewish" music. (Cf. Haïk-Vantoura,
op. cit., pp. T-12, T-21.)
The late Abraham Idelsohn (in his famous Thesaurus of
Oriental Hebrew Melodies, Vol. 1, p. 25) had this to say as well: "Riemann [in Folkloristiche
Tonalitatsstudien, Leipzig, 1916, Chapter 1] has...drawn our attention to
the pentatonic elements in the music of the ancient races. Aristoxenos (sic) has already called the pentatonics "archaika" (emphasis
mine). These tunes without semitones [half-steps],
extant in the folk-songs of the Chinese, the Irish, the Scotch, the Scandinavians, and in the Gregorian liturgy,
are also to be found in ancient Hebrew music." So the pentatonic scale, which (as we have already seen) was
used from very early times in ancient Egypt, was also called "archaic" by the ancient Greeks. Yet both
the pentatonic and chromatic scales may easily be derived from the diatonic scale; and all three scales are documented
from very early times in the ancient Middle East and elsewhere.
There was yet another genre of scale, also known to the ancient Greeks and called by
some "enharmonic". It alters the normal intervals of the
diatonic or diatonic-chromatic scale, making them smaller than a half-step or larger than a step (or even larger
than a step and a half, depending on the interval and the particular mode). It is the genre that is so common in
Middle Eastern music today, especially among the Arabic peoples, but also among the Jewish communities that have
lived among them for so long. (It is also found on some ancient as well as modern Egyptian nays, as we have mentioned.)
"The third (type), superior (annotation) to [i.e., later than] the other two, is the enharmonic," said
Aristoxenus, "for it was the last to appear and it is very difficult to accustom one's ear to it" (cited
by Haïk-Vantoura, op. cit., p. T-51).
If this genre of scale has been considered by some (such as Idelsohn, among others) to be typical of Temple music,
it has only been because of the unfounded Talmudic equation between the priestly music of the Temple and the folk music of the rabbinic synagogues.
Haïk-Vantoura had this to say about the "enharmonic" genre: "It is only in the 4th-3rd centuries
[B.C.] that the Greeks acquired a taste for melodies built on scale intervals less than the half step or slightly
passing it, which they called 'enharmonic'. It created a reactionary nostalgia for the earlier 'classical' music.
It suited wind instruments like the aulos and flute. One simply covered partially the finger hole corresponding
to the note." In this context, she added, "Biblical psalmody was accompanied by stringed instruments...diatonic
and chromatic genres suited these instruments. It was a simple, noble music" (op.
cit., p. T-19).
The fact is, most traditional music in
the world ultimately rests on the three "pillar degrees" of tonality: the tonic, fourth and fifth degrees.
These three degrees tend to be found at the melodic or melodic-verbal cadences or "punctuation points"; and the other degrees then "revolve around" the
cadential degrees. As a general principle, the more strict the tonal syntax is in this regard, the more likely
the music is to be diatonic or diatonic-chromatic
in genre. Since the biblical accentuation uses three
sublinear signs with very great frequency and consistency at the melodic-verbal cadences, it is only natural that
the music which the accentuation preserves should have turned out to be diatonic or diatonic-chromatic in genre.
One other thing is worth noting in this context. Curt Sachs, Hans Hickmann of the Museum of Cairo, Haïk-Vantoura
and others all have pointed out that the tonic (1st), 4th and 5th degrees of the scale were always considered the
foundation of tonality. Sachs, for his
part, pointed out that these degrees of the diatonic scale are the degrees most naturally produced by the human
voice. The reason for this is simple: the octave, fourth and fifth intervals
of a scale are based on fundamental mathematical ratios. The pentatonic scale
uses these intervals and none others; thus, it sounds the most "pure" (if emotionally reserved). The
diatonic and chromatic scales (depending on how they are derived in tuning) are based on mathematical ratios that
are more or less precise; this accounts for the various temperaments used throughout history. The enharmonic scales, for their part, divide the octave into very
small intervals; melodies based in such scales indeed sound "out of tune" to the ear accustomed to melodies
based on pentatonic, diatonic or chromatic scales. The scales themselves may indeed have "tetrachords"
bounded by the 1st, 4th, 5th and 8th degrees within the octave; but the degrees that "fill in the gaps"
between these "pillar degrees" may define intervals quite wide of a step, half-step or one and a half
steps (the intervals normal to diatonic and diatonic-chromatic scales).
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In the light of the above, let us compare yet once more the music reconstructed by
Haïk-Vantoura with the various other forms of ancient music reconstructed by other authors. The basic tonality
and modality of Haïk-Vantoura's restitutions conform to what we know of ancient Middle Eastern music, as does
the basis of the melodic system in chironomy. The rhythms are the simplest possible, syllabic and speech-based
-- again, as consistent with what we know of the melodic recitation of ancient texts. Moreover, the melodic structure
revolves around the three primary degrees of normal tonality: the 1st, 4th and 5th degrees. What sets Haïk-Vantoura's renditions apart from all the others on this page is
the "harmonic" quality of the melodic results. This is because in biblical chant, the musical accents
form a hierarchy which closely relates
to the verbal syntax. That is, in principle the 1st (tonic) degree ends every verse, marking full cadences; the 4th degree marks half
cadences; the 5th degree marks suspensive
cadences -- and so on. Such consistency of usage
is not found in the other forms of ancient music we have examined, nor indeed in some later forms of music such
as Gregorian chant -- but something like it is
found in European and other forms of folk music, and in Western classical music from
roughly the beginning of the so-called Tonal Age (ca. 1600-1900).
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Let us hear once again the strikingly "modern" quality of biblical psalmody
in particular, when compared to the reconstructed melodies of ancient Mesopotamia and Greece sampled here. The
biblical counter-example is one of the most "modernistic" (and striking) of the Psalms of David: Psalm
122, one of the "Songs of Ascents". From the interplay of melody and words, Haïk-Vantoura has inferred
a specific choral structure (alternating solo and choruses) in the original Psalm, again as consistent with what
we know of ancient practice in Israel and elsewhere.
This PDF file gives the complete score; the player below
plays a WMA file of the original recording of this score.
N.B.: If you cannot play
the MP3 file of the original recording on your computer using the plug-in below, you should be
able to play either
the MP3
via
this link, or
a WMA version via
this link.
Alternately, you
should be able to play
either a MIDI file (produced by this
author) via
this link,
or an MP3
rendition of the author's MIDI file (which
was created by Finale 2007 using a different Soundfont
or SF2 file) via
this
link. We have disabled the right-click
functionality in Internet Explorer in order to forestall the
unauthorized downloading of copyrighted files on this page. |
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After the fall of the Second Temple, Jewish and Christian music alike became quite
different in both spirit and form from the biblical "art music" sampled here. The Jewish liturgies rested
on the aural memories of the amateur synagogue
cantors, even as outside influences (including the Arabo-Persian maqamat) shaped the melodic styles the cantors used. Meanwhile, the mainstream Christian liturgies
(which borrowed from Judaism and paganism alike for their inspiration) took off in new directions entirely, especially
in the otherworldly Gregorian chants. Yet in all of these, some memories, however confused, of the original biblical
chant remained -- and we may now discern them thanks to Haïk-Vantoura's seminal (and in good measure serendipitous)
discovery.
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What of the sounds of the ancient instruments that accompanied the biblical and other melodies? "A number of stringed instruments would
have produced sounds similar to modern small harps, lyres and lutes. Other instruments, notably woodwind, percussion,
and the simpler stringed instruments, were merely less sophisticated forms of modern orchestral or folk instruments,
and some are still in use in the traditional cultures of the contemporary Near East" ("Music", in
Harper's Bible Dictionary, p. 665).
At least three widely-available recordings feature reconstructions of instruments from ancient Greece and other
ancient nations. They are Musique de la Grèce antique (Harmonia Mundi), Music of the Ancient Greeks (Pandourion Records), and Music of the Ancient Sumerians,
Egyptians and Greeks (Pandourion Records). (For images of the first two CD's,
see the Recordings section of this Web site.) These recordings are important for several reasons, not least because
they give a flavor of the "tone colors" available on ancient instruments. Some of the Greek instruments
in particular (including the nabla or
nablas, called the nevel in Hebrew Scripture) were actually borrowed from their Middle Eastern neighbors. |
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The following player plays a recording (in
WMA format) of the reconstructed salpinx or Greek trumpet shown above. (This is the trumpet
specifically mentioned in the New Testament Book of Revelation.) The call played on it is taken from a painting
on a ceramic knee protector used in sewing, depicting an Amazon salpinx player apparently performing the syllables "to-tee to-to-te". The
shape of the bell influences the harmonics possible on the instrument.
N.B.:
If you cannot play this MP3 file on your computer using the plug-in below, you
should be able to play it via this link. You also should be able to play the WMA
version via this link.
We have disabled the right-click functionality in Internet Explorer
in order to forestall the unauthorized downloading of copyrighted
files on this page. |
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Anne Kilmer's recording (op. cit.) features a reconstruction of the "Silver Lyre" of Ur (mentioned in our section
on The
Biblical Musical Instruments). Its sound is deep and rich (suggesting,
no doubt, the sound of a bull to the original player and audience), yet not all that different from that of a modern
gut-strung folk harp in its lower range. It is reasonable, then, that the
kinnorot and nevalim played by the sacred
musicians of Israel would have had tone colors that would not sound particularly "exotic" to our ears.
This is what Haïk-Vantoura's reconstructed melodies suggest as well. One must also consider the tone color
of the male voices used to sing the Psalms, as well as those of the trumpets,
shofarot and cymbals used to accompany
some of them; these, too, suggest an ensemble sound that could be gentle, rich or brilliant at need, yet still
not "exotic" to our modern sensibilities.
Some of the Greek and Egyptian instruments (it is true) would have had a much more exotic sound than those used
in the Hebrew cult. The same no doubt would have been true of some instruments used in the worship of Baal and
other deities in the Levant and Mesopotamia. Not all worship in antiquity was stately and formal! Quite the contrary,
some religions put great stress on the ecstatic,
the sensual, even the irrational. We glimpse this darker side of
pagan religion in
the Bible, notably in the account of Elijah facing the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18:25-29). We see much more in the literature
and surviving music of the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Canaanites, Hurrians, Hittites and various Mesopotamian peoples.
Reed pipes, drums, cymbals and other percussion instruments were put readily into the service of such religions;
but so were harps and lyres, due to their very versatility (and despite their frequent association with the "noble"
side of human nature and religious expression).
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This leads us to the matter of two fundamentally philosophical aspects of music: its melos
(or combination of parts into an expressive whole) and its ethos (or "moral force"). Both terms are Greek concepts, but have their counterparts in
every ancient culture about which we have exact information.
Melos (from which we get our English word
"melody") originally meant "member" (as of a body part). The word is so used in the Greek New
Testament. Sometimes one reads that melos
simply meant "melody" to the ancient Greeks -- that is, just one part or "member" of music.
However, certain comments by Aristides (Haïk-Vantoura, op. cit., p. T-24) tell a different story. To him, melos meant the combination of various parts of music. "The melody, the rhythm and the lexis (the words) must be perfect, so that the melos may be perfect," he wrote. Moreover, to Aristides (as indeed to the ancient Greeks generally),
music was only a "spice" for the poetry. (In antiquity, vocal music, not instrumental
music, had the pre-eminence. Only in rather recent times did instrumental music gain the upper hand, at least in
the Western world.) Finally, the choice of instrumental accompaniment, choral setting and even acoustical setting
for a particular work was by no means ignored; for as every musician and composer worth his salt knows, these factors
greatly influence the perception of a musical work by its audience.
Something should be said here about the instrumental harmony which was part of ancient Greek melos. Professional musicians in Greece, as in Egypt, used
heterophony in their performances. Philip
Neuman, in his liner notes to Music of the Ancient Greeks,
has this to say on the subject: "On certain selections the listener will hear the accompanying instruments
playing pitches that differ from the melody. Even though this
reparatory is rightly considered monophonic in nature,
there is evidence from the 5th century BC and later that professional musicians commonly used certain kinds of
rudimentary harmonization. This divergence from the melody was clearly described by Plato (Laws, 812d-e) in a cautionary statement to kithara instructors: 'the
kithara teacher and his student,
for the reason of making the notes clear, must play the notes on the
lyra in a manner that produces unison pitches
with the notes of the song. Concerning the playing of different pitches and ornamentations of the
lyra, when the
tune of the strings differs from the composer's melody, or when a group of small intervals are played with wide
ones, or quick notes with slow notes, or high notes against low ones, in consonant intervals or octaves, and the
way they introduce all manner of rhythmic embellishment to the notes of the
lyra, these things should not be taught
to students who must learn in three years all that is necessary in music.' Apparently he thought it was important
for students to learn the basics of rhythm, melody, mode, tuning, etc., before delving into more complex forms
of accompaniment in imitation of professional musicians."
Consider the implications of Plato's words. Professional music in ancient Greece (despite its fundamentally monophonic
nature) involved heterophony of considerable sophistication! There is no reason to assume ancient Israel, or ancient
Egypt, the Levant and Mesopotamia for that matter, would have found such sophistication beyond their conception.
The very structure of biblical prosody (which is itself fundamentally monophonic) nevertheless suggests a "harmonic"
conception of music, which suggests in its turn the use of instrumental heterophony. Biblical psalmody, which required five years of specialized training (according to Rabbinic
sources), would have had an even more solid "harmonic" foundation in its instrumental accompaniment.
Thus biblical Hebrew melos (even more
than ancient Greek melos) would have been
a combination of melody, harmony and rhythm
with any words used, just as in Western
"art music" in general today.
Different peoples have considered different intervals "consonant" or "dissonant", of course.
In the Middle Ages, the tritone (augmented
fourth or diminished fifth) was considered "the devil in music", to be avoided even in melody. The Greek
author Pseudo-Plutarch (in his De Musica
1137 b-d) "lists three additional pitches that were played in accompaniment to certain notes of the six scale
degrees of the melody. The resulting intervals were: perfect 5th (which he considered consonant), major third,
major sixth, minor third, and major second (all considered dissonant)" (Neuman, op.
cit.). Whereas in ancient Mesopotamia, the tritone seems to have been the
only interval of the diatonic scale that
was considered "unclear" (that is, dissonant)! The Egyptians used various scales and modes, some of which
could give intervals that were moderately to highly dissonant if desired. In biblical chant, considerations of
"consonance" and "dissonance" were subordinate to the goal of the music, which was to express the deep meaning of
the words correctly.
Ethos (a concept much discussed by the
Greek and later Christian philosophers) is the ability of music to influence the listener's emotions, thoughts,
moral character and even spiritual state. When Renaissance composers such as Monteverdi were working out the foundations
of modern Western tonality and harmony, they were also seeking to rediscover the ethos or moral force of ancient music. "Knowing that contrasts have the ability to move our
souls, and that this is the goal of good music, as Boethius said (in De Musicae): 'Music is linked to our nature in such a way that it can improve or worsen our way of living';
I have worked very hard to rediscover this musical expression which had been lost" (M. Roche, Monteverdi [Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1959, p. 131], cited
by Haïk-Vantoura, op. cit., p. T-52).
A "musical expression which had been lost"? This should remind the reader forcefully of the chief subject
of this Web site: the loss of the music of the Temple at Jerusalem. Yet this music was not the only form of "classical"
music to be lost by the end of antiquity. With the rise of "Gentile Christianity" and, eventually, Islam
on the one hand and the decay of pagan societies and institutions on the other, the other great liturgical music
forms of antiquity were caught between the hammer and the anvil. Though Greek music theory continued to be studied
in the Middle Ages (especially in the Muslim world), "classical" Greek and Roman music perished in practice
along with the "classical" Semitic liturgies. (This is not to ignore the absorption of various melodies from the pagan world into various Christian liturgies such as Gregorian
chant, and into Jewish synagogue chant as well.)
By the medieval period, religious music especially had taken several different directions in Europe, the Middle
East, and the Jewish Diaspora as such. The intimate interweaving between words, melody and accompaniment that had
characterized ancient melos (and which
gave ancient music its particular ethos)
no longer existed; and the cantillation of the rabbinic synagogues in particular sought to recover it in vain.
Instead of being melogenic (i.e., based
on a true melos of words and melody),
a given synagogue chant oscillated between logogenic
(word-dominated) and pathogenic (ornament-dominated)
extremes without ever actually becoming either one. It is as if the synagogue chant were searching, ever searching
for some key of expression, lost but half-remembered...
Moshe ben Asher (fl. 895 A.D.), next-to-last of the Masoretes, waxed rhapsodic about the interpretative powers
of the te`amim. The Kabbalists were even
more rhapsodic, ascribing great spiritual
influence to the te`amim when performed in conjunction with the text. Yet given the nature of the contemporary musical renditions of the notation, such
comments have borne but little weight in the eyes of most scholars. It is only with the rediscovery of the true
meaning of the notation that the full weight of these comments becomes clear, for they reflect memories of an ancestral tradition which was once a living
practice. But also, the rediscovery of the meaning of the te`amim fully vindicates the comments of the ancient Greek
and Christian philosophers about the melos
and ethos of ancient music. |
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What then about the spiritual power of ancient music -- and in particular that of the original cantillation of the Hebrew
Bible? Again, every culture has its own stories (some real, some fanciful) about the power of music in this regard.
We read in 1 Kings 8:1-11 and 1 Chronicles 5:1-14 of the LORD's reaction to the psalmody
of the Levites at the dedication of the Temple. There were at least 288 master musician-singers playing lyres,
harps and cymbals (1 Chronicles 25, RSV),
plus 120 trumpeters (2 Chronicles 5:12-13).
Apparently they were singing Psalm 136,
for the text cited is found in that Psalm; but also, the repeated litany of "for His mercy endures forever",
as found in that Psalm, would be ideally suited melodically for well-made valveless trumpets. The LORD's response (the filling of the sanctuary with a
cloud) is naturally dismissed by some as one of those "legends" one finds in so many cultures. But if
God exists, and if ancient music dedicated to Him (as simple as we find it to be) is as well-composed as it actually
is, why could not this event have happened exactly as the Chronicler states? (And if more nations were more truthful
about their own past, would there be any cause to doubt the biblical testimony as it stands?)
In any case, the melos of psalmody in particular was "the song of God" and "prophecy" (as we have
already noted). It was placed in the hands of the Levites, who acted as
the representatives of God to the people and vice versa. Ben Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) describes their performance
in Second Temple times thus:
"Then shouted the sons of Aaron, and sounded the silver trumpets, and made
a great noise to be heard, for a remembrance before the most High. Then all the people together hasted, and fell
down to the earth upon their faces to worship their Lord God Almighty, the most High. The singers also sang praises
with their voices, with great variety of sounds was there made sweet melody (melos)" -- or more literally, "the melos was made sweet" (Ecclesiasticus
50:16-18, translation and versification by Sir Lancelot C.L. Brenton, The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English [Hendrickson
Publishers, 1986], p. 119 of the Apocrypha).
Worth noticing too (once again) is the story of David, who played upon the kinnor to soothe Saul when an evil spirit came upon him
(1 Samuel 16:14-23); and of Elisha the
prophet, upon whom "the power of the LORD" came when he heard the playing of a skilled minstrel (2 Kings 3:13-20). Clearly, ancient Israel knew of and
exploited the ethos of their music, which
was founded in fundamental acoustical and syntactical (i.e., melodic-verbal) relationships (and therefore had the
maximum possible effect note for note).
If the "song of God" had such a spiritual context in Israelite thought, what then of the religious music
of other nations which did not know the God of Israel? We do have a few surviving examples of ancient Greek music,
most of it religious (and in the "classical" style). We also know that the great lyric poets of ancient
Greece were "mad" (as the Greeks themselves acknowledged). When the spirit of their tutelary god or goddess
was not upon them, they could not compose their works (at least not with the same degree of proficiency). This
is why invocations of one or another deity (or to several) are so common in Greek lyric poems. These works (which
by definition were meant to be sung, and generally with instrumental accompaniment) were "inspired" in
the strictest sense (again according to the Greeks themselves, including Plato).
The recordings La musique de la Bible révélée and Musique de la Grèce antique (both published by Harmonia Mundi France, and both featured on the Recordings page of this site)
could not be more different in their essential spirits, even though both contain "classical" music from
antiquity. Consider then the fundamental difference in the inspiration of Hebrew and Greek sacred texts. On the one hand, the God of Israel says about the melos that comes via His prophets: "I
the LORD speak the truth, I declare what is right" (Isaiah
45:19). On the other, we find comments in Greek literature such as the Muses
are said to have made to the Greek poet Hesiod (for another version of what they said, see
here): "We know how to tell many lies which are like the
truth; we also know how to tell the truth when we wish..." (paraphrase
mine).
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