Seminar on New and Old Testament music, and Ancient Near East - the Antecedents of Christian Church Music

Part 1 - 1 Heritage of Church Music - © 2004 - Gillian Lander

One of the issues we must deal with in the early lectures in this series is the failure of the the recording crew to get live examples of the time, and of the music publishing industry to find full manuscripts.

We are dealing with a period when writing itself was new. Cuneiform tablets remain from early Old Testament /Ancient Near East times, and hieroglyphics, and later on Hebrew script. Papyrus was new. In New Testament times, the Greek and Roman alphabets were in use, but higher mathematics still awaited Arabic numerals. The crudest of musical notation had to wait to develop yet another thousand years after New Testament days, and about 1600 years, to refine it to modern understanding. The evanescence and invisibility of pure sound makes it difficult to capture visually.

Having said that, later in the lecture we will hear from a group that has specialised in what we might call "musical archaeology" to record sounds that are echoes of the past. And we will hear live music living still through oral traditions, thousands of years old.  If you have a good familiarity with the Anglican / Catholic tradition, you may find yourself with goose bumps, and if you are interested in "World Music" you will have ears too.

So how can we and they explore music of those times? Only by reference to contemporary ancient literature and to the powerful oral tradition itself, and organology, and archaeology, and the combined skills of specialist paelaeography and ethnomusicology. And in this we are especially indebted to the immense scholarship of Jewish musicologist Abraham Idelsohn, working in the early years of the 20th century to produce his monumental Thesaurus of Hebrew Oriental Melodies.

Church music for millenia has been based about these modes, and became known as the Ecclesiastical Modes - all named after various Greek tribes. Dorian (D-d), Phrygian (E-e ), Lydian (F-f), Mixolydian (G-g), Aeolian (A-a),  Ionian (C-c) - [note B-b is missing- a lost Locrian mode. ]They are remote from our modern Major/minor modes. But since these are oriental melodies, there are also microtones, quartertones, that is, between each note of these modes. The octave contains 24 quartertones, not 12 semitones as we are used to.

But before we explore some of the references to music in the Old and New Testaments, a briefest look at the music of ancient Sumeria or Mesopotamia (Babylon or modern Iraq).

A gilded lyre found at Ur-c2650BCE, testifies to a sophisticated music theory and practise there, with a wealth of contemporary Akkadian cuneiform texts about tuning modes, string names and hymns. These people were aware of their pantheon of gods inhabiting the sphere of music. So a tuning system for a stringed instrument, perhaps this lyre, uses "Gotterzahlen" - God-Numbers, presumably in an effort to resonate with the god. In a musico-mythographical context, these god-numbers or ratios, are expressed in units, tantalisingly for us, either frequencies or units of string length, or both, representing the various gods Anu, Enlil, Sin, Samas, Bel Mardu  

15 - 30 - 40 - 50 - 60

(within this are evident octaves and Pythagorean ratios that became the basis of Western tuning systems) This could mean they had music in two parts, the lowest string (15) affording a bass line or drone. It could even mean a system of harmony based on chords of some kind - such as did not begin to evolve in Western Music until medieval times.

There is much more detail in research papers by Richard Dumbrill (1) on http://members.aol.com/ricdum/godnumbers.htm and I leave you with the thought that "Gotterzahlen" expresses an insight we have lost in modern times. Dare we patronise these ancient people from the security of our modern position?

Our music for worship, at worst, is used as a break in the torrent of words, the 'hymn sandwich', it helps fill a space, covers an awkward silence, is some easy entertainment for the troops - a reinforcement of the message, a tool of propaganda. And at the crassest, I quote - "our music ministry is to allow others to use the church for concerts." At best, we talk of music of the spheres, universal harmony, sounds of silence, God inhabiting the praises of his people, the threshold to the sublime or unseen, we acknowledge some vague relationships between music and mathematics, and now and then we stop still, capitivated in a crystalline moment when Eternity breaks through and our soul knows it and is nourished. The purpose of these lectures is to try and define the Ministry of Music more clearly and and come to terms with it usefully.

Over four thousand years after our musicians in Mesopotamia, and suddenly very much like one of us, John Donne captures some of the mystery in his great prayer :

Bring us, O Lord God at our last awakening, into the house and gate of heaven, to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings but one equal eternity; in the habitations of thy Majesty and thy Glory, world without end. Amen

(Keep John Donne in mind as we explore in later sessions, the music of Byzantium where there is clear understanding of the link between the earthly choirs and those of Revelations - Cherubim and Seraphim...)

Two thousand years after the same Mesopotamian period, the ancient people of Judah became captives to them - the Babylonian Captivity 586 BCE and the first Temple was in ruins. In Psalm 137 (1-4), a later Psalm, they wail the utmost of laments.. with great bitterness.

" By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept: when we remembered thee O Sion.
As for our harps we hanged them up: upon the trees that are therein.
For they that led us away captive required of us then a song and melody in our heaviness : Sing us one of the songs of Sion.
How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"

The musically sophisticated people of Babylon had clearly heard of the famed psalmody of Sion, and this has been noted by the psalmist (not David, in this much later psalm), who tells too that they accompanied their singing with stringed instruments.

Psalm 150 tells us more about their musical activity. They used trumpets (and we will hear of them soon), tuned cymbals, lutes, harps, strings and pipe... and danced.

Was it just in the temple? Probably not. Eric Werner lists the uses of the psalter in the Temple, and not all of it by any means. They were also "community" songs. We can envisage, with a touch of sanctified imagination, these songs must have had wider use, to have embedded themselves so deeply in the psyche of the people. They contain such a depth and span of human experience, as does folk music. Perhaps about the caravan fire in the evening, they would sing such as Psalm 114 - When Israel came out of Egypt - a sort of colourful Readers Digest condensed version of the Exodus story paralleled with the Entry Into Canaan, the Promised Land - a great yarn to be retold. In fact since beginning writing this series I have come upon the fifty year old work of Eric Werner, onetime Professor of Liturgical Music at the Hebrew University NY.  He has wonderful material on the use of Psalms in both Judaism and the emerging church, specifically and systematically used in the Temple as they were in the local synagogue. There would be little point in singing Psalms 133-134 anywhere else. Psalm 114 certainly was as we shall hear now. [ CD Echoes - 13]

In this work, we have the trumpets sounded before the singing of the psalm - note, two instruments sounded antiphonally, in answer to each other, producing but one tone.  A commanding ceremonial preface to the psalm. There were no valves, or harmonics yet. I imagine an instrument rather like the Swiss AlpHorn, and then note the cymbals crash before the antiphonal, monophonic singing in unison - men v. boys, then all together.  Mixed choirs were forbidden. Note how the group emphasises the verses "Tremble O earth at the presence of the Lord."  If you have had any experience of Anglican psalms, listen carefully. We have sung this for years out of the old Parish Psalter, and this tune Our Lord Himself from his boyhood in the Temple would have known well... We know it as Tonus Peregrinus, (it wanders about) "In Exitu Israel" - and in NT times and in Judaism - "B'tseth Israel" There is no knowing how old this tune is. It could date from the Exodus itself. It may be as old as humanity. Note that is is built on two answering phrases, call and response, in outline not unlike the basic school yard chant (I know a secret....)  Ref MP3 clip www.savae.org

Ne 11:17

Esd 2:42

1 Chr 23:25-26,

1 Chr 16:4

Now what of Temple worship? The Book of Chronicles is a prime source of information about the OT Second Temple - the practise of which in NT times we can  be assured by Jesus, was in need of another reformation. Roland de Vaux in his "Ancient Israel, Its Life and Institutions" (2) examines the roles of the class of Priests and Levites. The Second Temple musicians were Levites, the hereditary class that had responsibility for the Ark of the Covenant. Returning from exile in Babylon by the desert caravan, the singers were known as the sons of Asaph, a tribe of Levites. Asaph was the Temple Music Director, and we see numerous Psalms in the RSV Bible noting him or others as the musicians. Sometimes listed as Levites or alongside them. Regardless, they were of a class of social standing that was deeply and centrally involved in the running of the temple - doorkeepers, teachers, clerks and judges as well. David (c 1000-961 BCE ) had earlier set 4000 of these people apart (yes, but a relatively small proportion of the total of them) for choral services - a sought after aspiration. But consider the demented director of music, with a constant line of levitical "singers" by inheritance and perhaps no skill, lining up to do two obligatory temple services per year...

Singing (or vocal declamation) had come to occupy an important role in the liturgy, (there was a role for a trained choir, and cantor, but also the congregation had various responses to make) and the status of singers had risen as a result. The number of singers grew too, clad in white for liturgy. And they had a body of instrumentalists to either accompany them, or signal their performance - chief of which was the Shofar.  Note, instruments were banned in synagogues after the Fall of the Temple in CE70 -a form of living protest.  (Aquinas was quite wrong a thousand years later in deriding Jewish music for its instrumental colour - there was none but for the shofar ! )

And the Shofar is an instrument still played in synagogues  today - the ramshorn.  You can hear it in Auckland. Here it is prefacing the "Shema Israel "(Hear O  Israel) - the call to worship. [ CD Echoes 7 ]  This is the traditional  Yemenite manner of playing the shofar, and a Babylonian Jewish setting of the Shema.  (Dt 6:4-9 )

Rabbi Akiba ben Joseph ( CE 50-132) whose writing is preserved in the Talmud, and the Jewish historian Josephus (c CE 37-100), both kindly wrote about the music of the Temple in their experience before its destruction, in sufficient detail to be useful to a musicologist such as Idelsohn .

An assorted orchestra of lyres, harps and cymbals accompanied the daily singing of psalms and prayers. There was a quorum of at least twelve adult male singers plus boys - to add sweetness of tone.

Another text that would have been heard in the Temple is the Ten Commandments - "Wa y'daber Elohim" [ CD Echoes 9 ] This is Idelsohn's working based upon musical motives from Babylonian Jews, who are the oldest settlement outside Israel, and therefore a reliable source of historical material.

His end product is very similar to work by another musicologist, French Jewess - Suzanne Haik-Vantoura, whose had devised  a system of deciphering the musical signs above and below script of the Tiberian Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible.  These signs were a kind of hand signal or gesture, not unlike Guido d'Arezzo's neumes that led to the development of western notation.  Her work on this is "The  Music of the Bible revealed" - pub 1976 - with subsequent scores.  We will meet Guido in a later session.

These sounds would have been familiar to Jesus, well familiar with the Temple since childhood (remembering that Jesus as an adult was a critic of the temple)

Other music would also have been familiar to him outside of worship.

That of the Arab world at large as in this dance, it could well have been heard in the court of Herod. Instrumental pieces are usually preceded by an inprovised solo.[ CD 4 ]

At any wedding such as at Cana, the celebrations would have been week long and necessarily included dances and wedding songs. Hear this one - Ashir shirim (I will sing songs to God) [ CD 1]  A lively song of the Babylonian Jews.

As you listen, note the sectional nature of the music. It opens with gongs and cymbals, then a solo female voice enters with a bowed string instrument, and this voice part moves in microtones without words.  A trait of Arabic music. This section then is replaced by a rhythmic pattern developing into an ostinato (a repeating idea) with drumming. As the work progresses voices and rhythm alternate, gradually gathering numbers, complexity, and intensity. Note the ululations of the womens voices - traditional cries of joy.

The Greek cultural presence would have been evident through their songs too.  Song of Seiklos - (1st cent) [CD 5]  The Hellenisation of musical life in Israel was especially strong in the time of Herod the Great who imported Greek musicians to perform at Caesaria and Jerusalem, and at court. The text for this comes from a burial stele.  In the wider general history of western music, that of the Greeks is notable...

• for the Pythagorean system of tuning in a cycle fifths that pertained in the west until Bach's time, (and Equal temperament) and
• for the Oxyrhynchus Papyrus - the earliest hymn script in print.
• the introduction and use of the chorus in drama (later to be significant in the oratorio)

Keep this ancient Greek sound in mind. Opera buffs will know about the Florentine Camerata of the early 17th century. Peri and Caccini planned to revive Greek drama with monodic recitation.  The Greek sound must have borne similarity to others in the Middle East.

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