תיאור

A perfomance by Michael Levy on an evocation of the Biblical Lyre (the 10-string "Kinnor" of the Levites) of the late Suanne Haik Vantoura's incredible deciphererment of the original melody of Psalm 114 - last sang by the Levites in the Temple of Jerusalem, over 2000 years ago. Suzanne Haik Vantoura deciphered this beautiful music, from the mysterious "Te Amim" accents, attached to the oldest surviving text of the Hebrew Bible - she realized they were actually transcriptions of specific hand gestures - an ancient form of musical notation (also practiced in ancient Egypt since the Old Kingdom) called "chironomy", whereby specific hand gestures represented specific changes in the pitch of a melody...

Special thanks to John Wheeler, editor of Suzanne Haik Vantoura's book, "Music of the Bible Revealed", for the modern musical notation of the reconstruction & for the just intonation tuner, to enable the recreation of the purity of the just intonation of antiquity.

The English translation of the Hebrew text of Psalm 114 is as follows:

"When Israel came out of Egypt,
Jacob from a people of foreign tongue,
Judah became God's sanctuary,
Israel his dominion.

The sea looked and fled,
the Jordan turned back;
the mountains leaped like rams,
the hills like lambs.

Why was it, sea, that you fled?
Why, Jordan, did you turn back?
Why, mountains, did you leap like rams,
you hills, like lambs?

Tremble, earth, at the presence of the Lord,
at the presence of the God of Jacob,
who turned the rock into a pool,
the hard rock into springs of water"

תגיות