The Music of the Bible Revealed: Lamentations 1:1-2

Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura, LA MUSIQUE DE LA BIBLE RÉVÉLÉE (Harmonia Mundi France), Track 06.

This slideshow of Lamentations 1:1-2 includes the consonantal Hebrew Masoretic Text and modified versions of the transliteration and translation provided by Lev Software. The ancient melodic line and modality were inferred by her from the Masoretic Text (Letteris Edition).

Lamentations has long been suspected of having a melody (or rather a melodic theme) that carried over from the Temple to the Synagogue to the Church. Many decades ago, A.Z. Idelsohn noticed the similarity between a characteristic motive in the Sephardic/Oriental chant of Lamentations 1:1b and a recurring motive in the Maundy Thursday Gregorian chant of Lamentations (not just in 1:1b, but often in the rest of the book). Haïk-Vantoura's discovery sheds light on this correlation. The same "ear-catching" motive is found over the same words even in translation in the Temple chant, the Synagogue chant and the Latin Church chant of 1:1b. Evidently pilgrims to the Temple took home aural memories of the liturgy to the local synagogues. Either from the Temple directly or from the Synagogue, some motives were brought into the early Church's own music. In the case of the Latin chant, the motive found in the Temple chant of 1:1b (and of a number of other clauses) was used as a leitmotif for the chant of the whole book. A comparison (via musical scores) of 1:1 in the three liturgies is made in SHV's English book, THE MUSIC OF THE BIBLE REVEALED (BIBAL Press, 1991).

For more information, please see www.rakkav.com/biblemusic, www.shofargroup.org. www.savae.org, and (in French) www.estherlamandier.com.

Category:

Music

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• Haik-Vantoura
• Haik
• Vantoura
• Bible
• Hebrew
• religious
• Masoretic
• accents
• ancient
• music
• Megillot
• Lamentations
• Jerusalem