I was fascinated by the mention in class (on 8/31) that there was musical notion sprinkled within the Bible. This idea certainly makes sense considering the Psalms in particular are best understood in a musical context, but when we are left in the present day to just read words on a page, the seemingly obvious musical terminology slips one’s mind. More interesting yet is the fact that we still have no idea what many of these ancient musical terms mean, demonstrated by the fact that a wide variety are left untranslated from the original Hebrew.
Chapter 2 of the textbook provides us with some hints as to how some of this ancient music would have sounded and been performed. Suzanne Haik-Vantoura developed a system of setting many biblical texts to music by discovering a pattern apparent in the markings above certain texts in Hebrew; to her, this pattern was consistent with our modern understanding of music notes, making it easy for her to translate the markings, often called cantillation marks, into music. Haik-Vantoura’s system has now been used for several decades and its use gives us a sense that most of these ancient texts were chanted. This discovery seems to hold up, given that Jewish communities around the world and throughout history have long-standing traditions of chanting.
I found all of this to be super cool because it gives us a peek into the ancient world and what their relation to music was. Even if these hypothesized systems of translation are inaccurate, it is still providing us the opportunity to engage with these texts in a deeper way as we attempt to better understand the context of those living in biblical times.
I am so happy when students find the things cool that I also think are cool!