There have been many
writers in the last two hundred years that have believed that the music of
ancient Israel during the time that the Old Testament was very primitive. One of these arguments has been that it was
impossible for the music of Bible times to have utilized any type of
harmony. Until the 1970’s many writers
and musicologists were still denying that ancient Israel even utilized octaves
let alone any type of harmonic practice.
During the 1970’s the deciphering of the te’amim of the Bible by Susanne
Haik-Vantoura and the deciphering of the Hurrian cuneiform tablets by Dr. Anne
Kilmer et al have revolutionized modern
thinking about ancient music.
It may seem strange
that I would include the following few posts about the possibility that ancient
Bible music and the music of other ancient cultures utilized harmony in their
musicing in this philosophical blog. The
reason that I have included this discussion is simply that a Christian musician
who believes faulty notions such as: Bible music was probably very simple and
unartistic by modern standards, and that it was so very simple and under
developed that it could not have possibly utilized octaves or any type of
harmony, will probably not have much musical respect for it. I believe that one
has to have correct knowledge and respect for ancient Bible music in order to
have philosophical respect for it. I encourage my blog readers who are totally
unaware of the fact that the ancient music of the bible was highly developed
and that the entire OT was notated to read The
Music of the Bible Revealed, by Susanne Haik-Vantoura and Music of the Bible in Christian Perspective by
Garen Wolf.
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