Did Ancient Music Utilize Harmony? Part 1

Did Ancient Music Utilize Harmony? Part 1

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.  

Thought for the Day   

We now have much more knowledge of the formal properties of the ancient music of the Bible and some other ancient cultures than most Christian musicians believe that is known.