In class on Tuesday, August 31, we talked about ancient music and the Bible, as well as, covering some concepts of music in general, what forms music, and how we see that in the Bible. It was very interesting to listen and learn and start to think about the bible from another perspective and focus on looking at passages and focusing on them in a musical way of thinking. Another thing was starting to learn more and more about music in general as it has been since middle school that I have taken a course that focuses on music and relearning some of the vocab and other aspects that go along with it. First, we looked at the history of music and some of the oldest music that is available to us, then we began to look at music in ancient Israel and early Christianity, as well as talking about the instruments that were used in the playing of the ancient music.
We looked at the history of music and some of the oldest. Music has been around for centuries and the earliest making of music was with the voice and then as time went on they began to incorporate instruments to complement the sound of the voice as well as make more music. Some of those instruments would have been the lyre which looks similar to a harp although its size is made to be played on the lap of the musician, another few instruments would have been the lute and some that are more familiar such as the harp and flute which is referenced to in the Psalms being played by David. Then we began to look at the Psalms and we see before the Psalm begins a for example in Psalm 4 the ESV says, “To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments. A Psalm of David.” This is interesting because in class other beginnings to certain Psalms referenced other things such as, “To the leader: according to The Deer of the Dawn. A Psalm of David. This is interesting because we talked about how the Deer of the Dawn could be referencing another song and how the Psalm should be played to the tune or maybe melody of that song, but then you look at other Psalms and it is more straightforward with what it is trying to say like, “with stringed instruments.” That is fairly straightforward and we know what it is talking about. Just looking at these examples gave me a new way of looking at the text as normally I don’t even think of what the words say or mean that come before the text of the chapter of the Bible starts.
We also looked at some older music and the oldest song in the world and listened to them. The oldest song in the world was different and reminded me of middle-eastern music and if someone had played that without me knowing anything, I would have assumed it came from the middle east. It has the same style and tune that you hear in middle eastern songs and the notes are longer and it is not a fast-paced song. Overall looking at ancient music and seeing how it was written and hearing what we assume it would have sounded like based off of the old instruments and old written notes and songs was very interesting and to compare that to music today that is more fast-paced compared to the music that was presented in the first chapter of the book. Also just starting to look at the Bible from a different perspective and to begin to examine the music in the Bible. It seems it will become more and more interesting as the course carries on to examine both the Bible and music and to look at examples of more recent music that references the Bible or takes music from the Bible to use in different forms.