Thursday, December 20, 2007

"Music of the Bible Revealed"



From Suzanne Haik-Vantoura, LA MUSIQUE DE LA BIBLE REVELEE. Numbers 6:22-27, the "Priestly Blessing. " "Cover" rendition and reprise (with solo, chorus and accompaniment with lyres and harps) by the San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble (SAVAE).

One of the highlights of the recent SBL meetings in San Diego for me was a small-group session discussing with J. Clinton McCann Jr. some of his forthcoming work on the psalms. In that work he very, very briefly mentions the work of Suzanne Haik Vantoura, who claims to have deciphered the accent marks of the Hebrew text, reconstructing them as ancient musical annotations giving us access to the original melodies of biblical poetry.

What do you all think of this slideshow based on Vantoura's work? (She died Oct. 22, 2000; to read a bit about her, click here.)

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

She originally published her work in french in 1976 and the english translation in 1991. That's a long time for scholars to engage her argument. How has it been received?

-RBP

Sat Dec 22, 01:37:00 PM GMT-5  
Blogger S and C said...

Interestingly, I am not aware of too much attention given to her work by biblical scholars. Perhaps there just are not that many who both know a tremendous amount about the Masoretic accents and also a good deal about music theory. If anyone knows of critical assessments, please leave a comment! Thanks, ---SLC

Sat Dec 22, 09:27:00 PM GMT-5  

Post a Comment

<< Home